Empowerment of Tribal Women
Recently, it was seen on the result of the measures being implemented by TRIFED in one of its campaigns that the empowerment and skill development of tribal women is taking place, and this has greatly helped in connecting the tribal population with the mainstream.
Key Initiatives:
- Programs like Van Dhan Vikas Kendra/Tribal Start-UPs, Minimum Support Price and Minor Forest Produce etc. are being implemented to improve the lives and livelihoods of Tribal Women, which impacted positively on the Tribal Ecosystem.
- Van Dhan Yojana has emerged as a source of employment for tribal gatherers, forest dwellers and home based tribal artisans.
- The beauty of this program is that it ensures training of tribal dwellers, infrastructure support, and timely access to credit as well as development of value chains in MFPs.
- Apart from this, the income derived from the sale of these value-added products goes directly to the tribals.
- More than 1700 tribal enterprises have been set up across the country, providing employment to about 5.26 lakh tribal gatherers under it.
- The most important feature of this scheme is that among these tribal gatherers who have benefited the most are women.
Manipur Model:
In Manipur, more than 25,000 tribal gatherers, mostly women, have benefited through 77 Van Dhan Vikas Kendras. Women collectors were trained in making gooseberry juice candy and jam from the collected gooseberry and, along with it, compliance with the standards required for food safety and hygiene. Equipment and other essential equipment have also been provided and value addition has started with full enthusiasm.
Training of Bagh Printing
To improve the training and livelihood of trained tribal (mainly Women) from Manipur, work is underway by TRIFED in Barwani, Madhya Pradesh, where the second part of Bagh Prints training has started since December 2020.
Maheshwari and Chanderi weaving:
- Training of the traditional weaving Maheshwari and Chanderi is going to start very soon. More than 200 tribal women beneficiaries have been identified for this. These local tribals will be trained in Bagh Prints, Maheshwari and Chanderi traditional weaving.
- A total of Rs 1.88 crore has been allocated to train around 1000 tribal women in Bagh Prints, Chanderi and Maheshwari styles over a period of one year.
- Apart from this, in order to bring tribal women artisans in greater contact across the country and bring their skills and products up to international standards, TRIFED is also tying up with renowned designers like Ruma Devi and Reena Dhaka to train them
The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED)
- TRIFED was formed in the year 1987 under the aegis of Ministry of Tribal Affairs as the National Nodal Agency.
- It was registered under the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 1984.
- Its main objective is to promote the socio-economic development, economic welfare, empowerment and capacity building of tribal people with the help of knowledge, information and tools.
Functions:
- It mainly performs two functions, first- Minor Forest Produce (MFP) development, secondly- Retail Marketing and Development.
- The basic purpose of TRIFED is to arrange for the tribal people to sell the products collected or made by them from the forest at the right prices in the market.
- TRIFED works as an agent of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) for government procurement of wheat and paddy and as an agent of the Department of Agriculture and Cooperation in cooperative procurement of coarse grains, pulses and oilseeds.
Source – PIB
