“Van Dhan Yojana is changing the rural forest-dwelling tribal economy,” said Pravir Krishna, Managing Director TRIFED while speaking at the International Conference on Rural Transformation: From Natural to Cultural organized by Center for Rural Development and Innovative Sustainable Technology (CRDIST), Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur.
Organised between 5 to 6 May, this online conference deliberated upon transforming rural livelihood generation; especially, hard and soft infrastructure planning, implementation; convergence of traditional and modern technical knowledge for social well-being; sustainable natural resource (water, forest, land) planning and rural health and hygiene.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs has informed that in the last 18 months, the Van Dhan Vikas Yojana has led to great development with its quick adoption and robust implementation aided by the state nodal and implementation agencies across India.
The Ministry states that at least 33,360 Van Dhan Vikas Kendras (VDVKs) were incorporated into 2,224 Van Dhan Vikas Kendra Clusters (VDVKCs) of 300 forest dwellers each, all of which have been sanctioned by TRIFED as of March 31, 2021.
All Van Dhan Vikas Kendras usually include 20 tribal members each and 15 such Van Dhan Vikas Kendras form a single Van Dhan Vikas Kendra cluster.
What is Van Dhan Vikas Yojana?
The Van Dhan tribal start-ups programme or Van Dhan Yojana, launched on 14th April 2018, is an integral part of ‘Mechanism for Marketing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP) through Minimum Support Price (MSP) & Development of Value Chain for MFP.’ It is a flagship scheme of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, which aims to provide remunerative and fair prices to tribal gatherers of forest produces, almost three times higher than would be available to them from middlemen, trebling their incomes.
The program was constituted to address the arduous problems faced by Tribals such as possession of land/house with no rights; restrictions in the collection of minor forest produce; exploitation by middlemen; displacement from national parks and wild sanctuaries, lack of development in forest villages etc.
Therefore, TRIFED as the nodal agency at the national level implemented the Van Dhan programme in 27 States and 307 Districts with the availability of MFPs and a significant forest-dwelling tribal population.
Van Dhan tribal start-ups and Developments Under VDVKs/ VDVKCs
The Van Dhan tribal start-ups programme provides value addition, branding & marketing of Minor Forest Produces by establishing Van Dhan Kendras to further aid the creation of sustainable livelihoods for the forest-based tribes.
It is technically a boost for MSP as it has emerged as a source of employment generation for tribal gatherers, forest dwellers and tribal artisans.
Moreover, the Van Dhan Vikas Kendra Clusters target to provide the VDVKs economies with scale, livelihood and market linkages, as well as entrepreneurship opportunities to nearly 6.67 lakh Tribal forest gatherers in 23 states and 2 UTs, notes the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
As per TRIFED, 50 lakh tribals have been impacted by the Van Dhan start-ups programme up until now.
Almost 80% of the established VDVKs are in the North-East wherein Manipur, in particular, emerged as the Champion state where the Van Dhan programme brought a major source of employment for the local tribals. Subsequently, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh are other states where the scheme has been adopted with overwhelming results.
Talking about the increased market linkages, a wide range of products from fruit candy (amla, pineapple, wild apple, ginger, fig, tamarind), jam (pineapple, amla, plum), juice & squash (pineapple, amla, wild apple, plum, Burmese grapes), spices (dalchini, turmeric, ginger), pickles (bamboo shoot, king chilly), processed giloy, etc., which are processed and packaged in Van Dhan Vikas Kendras have reached the market and are even being marketed digitally on TribesIndia.com and through the Tribes India outlets.“Sankalp Se Siddhi” – Village & Digital Connect DrivePravir Krishna, MD of TRIFED, spoke about “Sankalp Se Siddhi” – Village & Digital Connect Drive at the international conference, which began on April 1, 2021. This is a 100-day drive that has 150 teams (10 in each region from TRIFED and State Implementation Agencies/Mentoring Agencies/Partners) visiting ten villages each.Under this drive, 100 villages in each region and 1500 villages in the country will be covered in the next 100 days. The drive aims to activate the Van Dhan Vikas Kendras in these villages to achieve Rs 200 crore sales during the next 12 months from Van Dhan units. The visiting teams will also identify locations and shortlist potential VDVKs for clustering as TRIFOOD, SFURTI units in the form of larger enterprises. Currently, TRIFED is collaborating with different ministries and organisations wherein It has presented MoUs to different ministries such as MSME, MoFPI and Ministry of Rural Development to align the scheme with similar programmes of these Ministries, resulting in the convergence of Van Dhan Vikas Kendras and its clusters with SFURTI, ESDP from MSME, Food Parks Scheme of MoFPI and NRLM, within M/oRural Development. The collaborative ties of TRIFED with different ministries in line with the goal of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs aims to bring a complete transformation of the tribal ecosystem across the country.
WhatsApp us
Pingback: blote tieten