Governance
TRIFED’s Digitisation Drive
- 08 Aug 2020
- 4 min read
Why in News
The Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India (TRIFED) celebrated its 33rd Foundation Day on 6th August 2020 and launched its own virtual office on the same day.
Key Points
- Virtual Office:
- It has 81 online workstations and 100 additional converging State and agency workstations that will help the team members of TRIFED in working with their partners across the country on mission-mode towards bringing the tribal people closer to mainstream development.
- To gauge the level of employee engagement and streamline their efforts, an Employee Engagement and Work Distribution Matrix with Dashboard Links has also been launched.
- Reasons:
- After the Covid-19 pandemic, every aspect like shopping, banking, working, etc. has gone online and it has been observed that the trend has increased even after relaxations of lockdowns.
- All these organisational initiatives are a part of TRIFED’s ambitious all-encompassing digitisation drive to promote tribal commerce and map and link its village-based tribal producers and artisans to national and international markets by setting up state of art e-platforms benchmarked to international standards.
Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India
- Formation:
- TRIFED came into existence in 1987 as the national nodal agency under the aegis of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.
- It was registered under the then Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 1984.
- It started its operations in 1988 with its head office in New Delhi.
- Objectives: Socio-economic development of tribal people, promotion of economic welfare, empowerment of tribal people with knowledge, tools and information and their capacity building.
- Functions: It mainly undertakes two functions which are Minor Forest Produce (MFP) Development and Retail Marketing and Development.
- Initiatives and Involvement:
- It started the procurement and marketing of tribal art and craft items through its first retail outlet called TRIBES INDIA in New Delhi in 1999.
- It has organised the Van Dhan Internship Programme, to enhance the output of the Van Dhan Yojana.
- It has also launched a transformational Tech For Tribals program in partnership with Institutes of National Importance (INIs) to develop Tribal entrepreneurship.
- TRIFOOD Scheme is a joint initiative of the Ministry of Food Processing Industry, Ministry of Tribal Affairs and TRIFED and it promotes value addition to MFP.
- Mechanism for Marketing of MFP through Minimum Support Price (MSP) and Development of Value Chain for MFP was implemented in 2013 to ensure fair returns to forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes (STs) and other traditional forest dwellers.
- It has organized a Webinar on Covid-19 Response in collaboration with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
- The webinar was organised for virtual training of TRIFED Trainers and Self Help Groups (SHGs) on basic orientation on Covid-19 response and key preventive measures to ensure that tribal gatherers carry on their work safely.
