Tripura Bamboo Mission

Tripura Bamboo Mission was created by the Government of Tripura in the year 2006 to provide a strong and vibrant platform to the lakhs of tribal and rural community of Tripura who depend on bamboo for their livelihood. Bamboo being the major forest produce under Non Forest Non-timber forest products (NTFP ) category, had a very limited use in local construction and supplying to paper mills situated outside the state. The Mission was established under the Department of Industries & Commerce to focus more on value addition of bamboo resource available in the state.

Intervention

The Mission studied the value chain and market of all the sub-sectors within bamboo and came up with a strategy document for each subsector with required investment and turnover potential. The project is being implemented in a Public Private Pattnership (PPP) mode since August 2007 by IL& FS Clusters, and follows a cluster development approach with integration of institution building, technological linkage, market facilitation and credit facilitation coupled with resource upgradation.

Majority of the beneficiaries are women and minorities who comprise of the poorest sections of the population in the state. IL&FS Clusters has deployed a multi-skilled team in Tripura and has built a network of partners and domain experts to undertake the implementation.

Implementation

The Mission focuses on skill training of the artisans, farmers and entrepreneurs involved in the bamboo sector based on the practical need of the trainee. The practices followed are unique with an integrated approach during pre-training, training and post training phases.

Pre- Training Phase

• Identification of the product based on market demand: Based on the feedback and market study, the TBM team identifies the product.
• Identification of the skill gap: During the mobilization of artisans, the skill gaps of each of the artisans are being mapped and grouped for training on specific skill.
• Mobilization of the artisans into producer groups: the artisans who are interested for skill training are asked to form one group of their own. Each artisan producer group has bank account, required books and records, working shed and some working capital to undertake the production.
• Backward and forward marketing agreement: Each producer group has formally and informally done agreement with some of the leading entrepreneurs for marketing the products.
• Training of Trainers: All the cluster managers, cluster coordinators along with master trainers from the respective clusters are being trained on regular basis.

Training Phase

• Imparting of Training: the training imparted by TBM is divided into two major categories like domain skill and soft skill.
• The domain skill trainings are mostly customized to meet the need of the local artisans, entrepreneurs and the products that are to be produced and marketed.
• The soft skill training covers book keeping, accounting, group management, leadership training, marketing, behavioural training, health safety and hygiene at work place.

Post training Phase

• Handholding the trained group: All the groups covered under the training are monitored on weekly basis in terms their production, book keeping, quality control and supply order executed.
• Execution of Market orders; the TBM trade facilitation cell provides marketing linkage to the entire producer groups on regular basis.

Impact

• Skill training to over 43000 persons in different aspect of handicraft, incense & resource generation
• Over 60 producer groups (SHGs, Societies) promoted
• Promotion of bamboo plantation in private lands in commercial format with support from MGNREGA, JICA etc. in more than 900 ha over last 4 years covering around 1700 farmers
• TBM has so far exceeded in not only consolidating the bamboo sector in Tripura but has also initiated a number of activities for value addition and scaling up of the production to realize the market potential of the sector.

Key takeaways

This is a unique model that focuses on capitalising on local industry in PPP and formation of artisan owned institutions (producer groups, Societies); developing them as viable business enterprise.

For more information, visit http://tripurabamboo.com

Source : Skilling for employability - Best Practices