Illiterate Tribals learned a 'pleasant' lesson in the COVID-19 era, switched to e-commerce platform to survive

India has taken a great initiative by introducing E-commerce platforms to nearly 50 lakh tribals spread in the remotest parts of the country so as they could market their art and forest produce using digital platforms mainly Amazon, and Flipkart.

The initiative proved a big hit particularly at the time of Corona when the world economy suffered huge losses. The tribals in India not managed not only to survive but also opened a new window for their future trade that could be as high as Rs two lakh crore annually. As per a study conducted by the estimate made by Indian policy making institute--NITI Ayog, the annual trade of tribal art and forest produce is to the tune of Rs two lakh crore(approximately USD 2.5 billion).

Even if a small portion of the trade through E-commerce/digital platform, it would be near to India’s most famous platform Flipkart and Amazon. The TRIFED not only helped them to upload and sell their produce on these digital platforms, but also trained them how to get the best price of their produce on these platforms.

With Pandemic Covid-19 raging across the country when every aspect of life has gone online, TRIFED launched its own Virtual office on its Foundation Day, August 6, 2020. The network has 81 online workstations and 100 additional converging State and agency workstations that will help the team of TRIFED warriors work with their partners across the country – be they from the nodal agencies or implementation agencies –on Mission-mode towards bringing the tribal people closer to mainstream development.

‘Digital Literacy’ to tribals at the time of COVID-19 is probably one of the biggest achievements of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs Ministry in the year 2020-21, which launched a series of initiatives to bring tribals into the mainstream of business to switch on the e-commerce platform to sell their forest produce.

This year, when almost every business was going down due to corona, it was tribals who not only managed to survive but also ventured into the e-commerce business—thanks to TRIFED (The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India), which introduced e-commerce platforms including Amazon and Flipkart to tribals to sell their produce. In fact, it also set a target of Rs 100 crore to sell their produce.

In this fiscal year, the Ministry Tribal Affairs had also launched a program GOAL (Going Online As Leaders) to provide mentorship to tribal youth through digital mode. It was aimed to upskill and empower 5,000 tribal youths in the current phase to harness the full potential of digital platforms and tools to learn new ways of doing business, explore and connect with domestic and international markets.

“The digital skilling and technology will integrate them into the mainstream. The program was designed with a long term vision to develop the potential of tribal youth and women to help them acquire skills and knowledge,” said a senior officer of the Tribal Ministry. The program would further be extended to cover any number of tribal persons who show a keen interest in being mentored to achieve their goals, the ministry stated.

In addition to this, the Ministry also started a unique project ‘Tech for Tribal’ which was aimed to transform Tribal Entrepreneurs. The Project was aimed at capacity building and imparting entrepreneurship skills to tribal forest produce gatherers enrolled under the Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana(PMVDY). The trainees will undergo a 30 days program over six weeks comprising 120 sessions.

The faculty from premium institutes including IIT-Kanpur, IIT-Roorkee, IIM Indore, Kalinga Institute of Social Science, Bhubaneshwar and SRIJAN organized tribal entrepreneurship and skill development program for tribal forest produce gatherers, who were enrolled under the Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana(PMVDY). The trainees were given a 30 days program over six weeks comprising 120 sessions.

Besides digital literacy and skill development program, the Ministry also managed to introduce ‘MSP’ (Minimum Support Price) for 23 new forest produce so as the tribals get a reasonable price for their produce.

In another convergence -based initiative, TRIFED has planned the transformation from the Van Dhan mode to the Tribal enterprise mode. As per the program launched in August, entrepreneurs from tribal areas were encouraged for processing forest produce under SFURTI (Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional Industries) and TRIFOOD. In this cluster-based model of development, a typical SFURTI unit will include 10 Van Dhan Kendras (a cluster) and include 3000 households and encompass a tribal population of 15000 tribals. It has planned to take up 200 TRIFOOD projects across the country in the first phase in the coming months with the plan to initiate 100 TRIFOOD projects immediately.