Government will introduce a mechanism, including fixing of minimum support price, to provide fair returns to nearly 100 million forest dwellers who depend on minor forest produce for their livelihood, a demand pushed by Union Minister Jairam Ramesh to alleviate poverty and exploitation of the poor and the tribals.
The Union Cabinet, which will meet here on Thursday, is expected to consider and clear a Tribal Affairs Ministry proposal that would ensure reasonable income to the poor gatherers mostly living in Maoist-affected areas where they face difficulties to bargain for fair prices for 12 types of minor forest produce (MFP), official sources told PTI here.
According to the proposal, Minimum Support Price (MSP) would be determined based on the baseline survey of price for each of the MFP, its cost of collection, cost of clearing and primary processing, packaging and transportation cost for each state.
A Pricing Cell constituted in the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited (TRIFED) would be assigned this task.
The Ministry will finally approve and announce state-wise MSP for each MFP taken up for that state and the price review would be carried out every three years based on revision in cost of collection.
Thirteen forest produces namely "tendu, bamboo, mahuwa flower, mahuwa seed, sal leaf, sal seed, lac, chironjee, wild honey, myrobalan, tamarind, gums (gums karaya) and karanj" were recommended by T Haque committee constituted for studying the minimum support price issue.
However, mahua flower would be kept out of MSP regime as it is a source of food for members of Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwelling communities, sources said.
According to sources, a revolving fund will be operated at state level for upfront payment for procuring MFP for the initial two years on 75:25 sharing by the Central and participating state governments. A budgetary provision of Rs 345 crore has been proposed in the scheme for this purpose.
In 2011, during his stint as environment minister, Jairam Ramesh had written to deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, saying MSP must be notified for the 12 such MFPs.
