Sankalp Se Siddhi: Transformation of The Tribal Ecosystem in India

'Sankalp se Siddhi'– a village and digital connect drive — aims to aid a complete transformation of the tribal ecosystem across the country till mid-July this year.

The sole purpose of the drive is to help disadvantaged tribal sections of society.

Starting from April 1 this year, this 100-day drive will entail 150 teams, 10 in each region, from Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED) and state implementation agencies or mentoring agencies or partners) visiting 10 villages each.

At least 100 villages in each region and 1,500 villages in the country will be covered in the next 100 days. "The main aim of this drive is to activate the Van Dhan Vikas Kendras in these villages," said the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

TRIFED under the Ministry of Tribal Affairs launched the 'Sankalp se Siddhi' drive following the success of the Village and Digital connect initiative. The regional officials across of TRIFED across the country went to identify villages with a significant tribal population and supervised the implementation of the various programmes and initiatives earlier in 2021 under the Village and Digital connect initiative.

Among all of TRIFED's initiatives that have been put in place to help the disadvantaged tribal sections of the society, the scheme, Mechanism for Marketing of Minor Forest Produce (MFP), through minimum support price (MSP) and development of value chain for MFP that provides MSP to gatherers of forest produce and introduces value addition and marketing through tribal groups and clusters and Van Dhan Vikas Kendras (VDVK) has found widespread acceptance across the country.

Especially during the pandemic in 2020, the VDVK scheme has emerged as a panacea for the tribals, said the Ministry.

"The objective of the MSP for MFP scheme is to establish a framework for ensuring fair prices for the tribal gatherers, primary processing, storage, transportation while ensuring the sustainability of the resource base addressing the problems tribals are facing such as perishable nature of the produce, lack of holding capacity, lack of marketing infrastructure, exploitation by middlemen, and timely government intervention."

Once the VDVK scheme is activated in 1,500 villages, the Ministry said sales of approximately Rs 200 crore are expected during the next 12 months. "The visiting teams will also identify locations and shortlist potential VDVKs for clustering as TRIFOOD, and SFURTI units as larger enterprises."

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"They will also identify tribal artisans and other groups and impanel them as suppliers so that they can have access to larger markets through the Tribes India network – both physical outlets and TribesIndia.com," said the Ministry. (IANS/KR)