National Workshops on Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana begins

A two day “National Workshop on Pradhan Mantri Van Dhan Yojana (PMVDY)” begins here today. PMVDY is a component of 100 days plan of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.  The workshop has been organized to take stock of all the activities under the program and to plan the future steps. Participants from 25 States are participating in the workshop along with the TRIFED team.

Addressing the participants Shri Pravin Krishna, MD, TRIFED said that Van Dhan Scheme is creating tribal entrepreneur and it is not a MSP programme. He emphasised that Branding, Packaging and Marketing of tribal products are very important factors. Also a loyal network of Retailers needs to be created by paying them a good commission. He said that a good business model needs to be adopted alongwith robust technological support and focus should be on value addition.

TRIFED has so far received and sanctioned 555 VDVK proposals from the 15 states i.e. Andhra Pradesh (30), Assam (3), Bihar (8), Chhattisgarh (136), Gujarat (17), Jharkhand (39), Karanataka (19), Madhya Pradesh (20), Maharashtra (64), Manipur (6), Nagaland (20), Odisha (156), Rajasthan (25), Tamil Nadu (7) and Uttar Pradesh (5).

The State Nodal Departments and the implementing agencies of the States need to take necessary action for establishment of Van Dhan Kendras in their respective States, including one model Demo VDVK centre in each state. The senior officials from each of the state nodal/implementing agency is expected to present a brief of post-sanction activities being undertaken in the state w.r.t. implantation of PMVDY.

There are around 208 VDVK proposals in the pipe line from the States of Madhya Pradesh (100), Manipur(69) and Mizoram (39) which are expected to be received and sanctioned by 10^th November, 2019. The respective State Nodal Departments/Implementing agencies need to submit the same at the earliest and also present brief of the activities being undertaken in the Sates w.r.t. implementation of PMVDY. Besides, the remaining States wherever the implementation of PMVDY is yet to initiate, need to take required action and submit VDVK proposals immediately.

All the all relevant documents, including guidelines, operational procedures, processes involved, proposal formats, business models, FAQs and pre and post sanction activities, etc. relating to the Van Dhan Karyakram have been uploaded on dashboard titled “State Monitoring of Van Dhan” as per the link given: - State Monitoring of Van Dhan – Google Sheets. The above Dashboard has been created to monitor the activities as well as to highlight issues which need redressal. The State Nodal Departments/State Implementing agencies have already been requested to nominate a  nodal person and a team from their end, who could coordinate and update the Van Dhan Dashboard on regular basis.

TRIFED is in the process of developing an IT-platform and mobile application for PMVDY. The different features of the same are being discussed and shared with all the stakeholders in the workshop for their feedback. The SRS document for IT platform and Mobile App. have been uploaded on the Van Dhan Dashboard.   

Source; PIB