Union Minister for Tribal Affairs, Jual Oram, today here inaugurates a Single Window System for obtaining information on Minor Forest Produces (MFPS) through Toll Free Call Service number 1800-180-1551, where market rates information can be provided over phone to tribals and others on asking.TRIFED initiated a dialogue with Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) which is already running Kisan Call Centres (KCC) for disseminating market information about agricultural products. Establishing Toll Free Call Centre’s would have entailed major capital and recurring manpower expenses. So it was decided that instead of establishing a parallel infrastructure for similar service, TRIFED should leverage the existing infrastructure of Kisan Call Centres (KCC). TRIFED entered into negotiations with Ministry of Agriculture who very kindly agreed to provide the necessary linkage of “MFP net” with KCC. This is another commendable initiative of convergence between two Ministries which will create synergy and optimum utilisation of Govt. resources.
KCCs are available at Mumbai, Kanpur, Kochi, Bangaluru, Chennai, Jammu, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Indore, Kolkata, Patna, Coimbatore, Kolkatta (North East States), Pune, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur & Bhubaneshwar. With the operationalisation of this service, tribals can call from anywhere and enquire about:
MSP of different items,
State Implementing Agencies for MSP for MFP,
Market price of MFPs in different Markets
Since most of the tribal communities are also engaged in farming apart from MFP collection, they can also enquire about market related information about agricultural commodities.
When someone calls Toll Free number 1800 180 1551, the Farm Tele Adviser (FTA) from the other end enquires about the caller’s Name, Father’s name, Address, Phone Number, Land holding etc. Once the FTA records this information, Caller may ask his/her question in Hindi or Local language. FTA accesses “Farmer’s Portal” linked with TRIFED’s “MFP net” website to make the information available to the Caller instantly. In order to keep information on TRIFED’s website updated, its 13 Regional offices located across India collects and feed information about market prices for different MFPs.
All the stakeholders of this service are benefitted with this convergence between two Ministries. The other benefits to tribals include:
Tribals get market information about MFPs and Minimum Support Price (MSP) free of cost.
Tribals also get information about Agro commodities.
TRIFED is able to create a network for collection and dissemination of information without any extra cost.
TRIFED has saved its precious and scarce resources which would have otherwise gone into creating a parallel system.
Inclusion of MFPs has expanded the ambit of “Farmer’s Portal”
Convergence between two Ministries created synergy and optimum utilisation of existing infrastructure which will prove to be a trend setter for others.
A database of tribals using telephony gets created which can be used for spreading multiple social messages and general awareness about various Government programmes.