The Hindu Business Line : Bastar to emerge as rural biz hub for tribals

New Delhi, Jan. 2 The Department of Commerce in co-operation with the Ministry of Panchayati Raj is spearheading a plan of action to alter the profile of the naxal-hit Bastar district in Chhattisgarh State by providing gainful employment opportunities to the tribal families in handicrafts and processing of forest produce through value addition.

Disclosing this to Business Line here, the Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, who visited Bastar for two days to participate in the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signing ceremony between Panchayats and NGOs concerning bell-metal, terracotta and wooden handicrafts under the Rural Business Hubs (RBH) concept, said that the basic idea is public-private-panchayati-partnership (PPPP).

Handicrafts Items

The aim is that the benefits of exports must go to the primary producers numbering around 20,000 to 25,000 families involved in handicrafts items. In 2006-07, India earned $3.5 billion out of handicrafts items from big centres like Delhi, Jaipur, Jodhpur, Moradabad, Saharanpur and Chennapatna in Karnataka.

He said the share of Bastar is hovering around $5-$10 million, which would be stepped up to $100 million. Even as new steel plants are coming up in the Bastar district, “they are high-end and we focus on mass-end by bringing in elected Panchayati bodies, export promotion council for handicrafts, NGOs and the lead bank, SBI. We will also rope in IL&FS to foster cluster development activity.” He said MoU has been signed for Kondagaon Handicraft RBH to promote the handicraft items from this area.

Lac production

Mr Ramesh said that the second important one was in the area of non-timber forest produce as Bastar is the country’s largest producer of tamarind but there is no value addition. He said that if the seed is removed from tamarind it has an industrial use and an industry could be built. Shellac and Forest Produce Export Council (SHEFXIL) with Zilla Parishad, Bastar, would develop tamarind processing and value addition facilities. He said currently India exports lac worth Rs 165 crore and Bastar has a lot of potential for lac production.

He said the Department of Commerce has already identified places such as Bastar, Adilabad in Andhra Pradesh, Purila in West Bengal and Kanker in Chhattisgarh where SHEFXIL would take up cultivation of lac and processing and value addition so that over a period of five years lac exports would fetch Rs 500 crore.

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