Tribal development and marketing of NTFPs for poverty alleviation - a case study in Andhra Pradesh, India

摘要

Collecting NTFPs is not only a traditional tribal activity for survival but it could also be converted into an effective instrument for eradicating poverty. This paper presents three concepts that may be examined further. Though NTFPs has value as economic good, imperfections in marketing result in very low realization or at times disastrous sale. Unless we address the problem of marketing we cannot really make NTFP collection a reliable source of income. Tribal Development Cooperative Corporations (TDCCs) are expected to protect the tribal communities from exploitative middlemen and traders, but they are not in a position to buy the entire produce in order to command the price of that commodity. The other concept is closely related to the above - though commercial crops have support prices, the most perishable items like NTFPs do not have any such support. Perhaps this is because the tribal communities who collect the NTFPs are total dependents on the generosity of successive governments and do not belong to the vocally strong sectors. One could easily notice that the people who are vulnerable to environmental degradation are from the same sectors that have been discouraged from utilizing the resources efficiently based on their own knowledge gained over time. The present arrangement of self-help approach to resource utilization is in fact creating conflict between various implementing agencies, ultimately affecting the members of the self-help groups.