Shyamhari Chakra
In a bid to eliminate the middlemen and establish a direct link between the village-based tribal products with national and international market, TRIFED – Tribal Co-operative Marketing Development Federation of India – has embarked upon an ambitious scheme of e-commerce.
The scheme that assumes greater importance during the ongoing pandemic-affected devastated economy is being implemented in association with state government agencies across 21 states.
Apart from its own Tribes India e-mart platform, TRIFED has roped in popular e-commerce players like Amazon and Flipkart to aggressively promote the scheme that has seen an investment of above Rs.3000 crores during the first quarter of the current financial year.
The scheme was mooted as soon as the sudden lockdown caused unforeseen stress on sale of tribal products – stocks by tribal artisans worth Rs 100 crores were lying unsold.
As an urgent relief measure, TRIFED purchased more than one lakh items to ensure payment to the large number of tribal families. It further launched an aggressive plan to market these unsold goods through e-commerce, explained sources in the Ministry of Tribal Affairs that monitors TRIFED.
The Central Government agency has initiated digitising all the information related to the forest dwellers, village haats and their warehouses in order to facilitate an effective e-commerce network.
Nearly 5,000 youths from the tribal communities would be imparted skills in tribal entrepreneurship through these digital platforms who would be the link between their communities in the villages and the market at the national and international level, the Ministry sources maintained.
Meanwhile, TRIFED has set up its country-wide virtual office network with 81 online work-stations and 100 additional converging state and agency work-stations to involve the tribal people directly in the ambitious programme.
The Central Government’s branded Tribes India e-mart platform would be launched on August 15 that would ensure direct trade between the tribal artisans and buyers of their products, the sources shared.
