HYDERABAD: An initiative introduced as a pilot project in 2019 to address the nutritional deficiencies among tribals, has not only achieved the potential to improve the nutritional intake of the selected tribal population, but has also become a financial support system for Adivasi women working in the food processing industry.
The Central government’s ‘Giri Poshana’, an yearly scheme to address issues such as underweight, stunted growth and anaemia among children and adolescent girls, and low haemoglobin count in pregnant and lactating mothers among the tribal communities through nutritional intervention, is being implemented though convergence of Tribal Welfare and Women and Child Welfare departments, with technological, operational and scientific support from ICRISAT.
The idea of the project was to deliver three ready-to-cook food products such as multi-grain cereal, jowar meal and multi-grain sweet meal, and three ready-to-eat products such as peanut sesame chikki, peanut-fried gram chikki and jowar bites, which were formulated and developed by ICRISAT, to the targeted beneficiaries through Anganwadi centres in Agency areas.
The initiative was introduced as a pilot project of ICRISAT’s Agribusiness and Innovation Platform as ‘Nutrifood basket,’ covering 5,000 tribals. During the second phase, named Giri Poshan-2 launched in 2019, the officials went the extra mile and delivered food to 13,000 beneficiaries at their door-steps in Utnoor, Bhadrachalam and Eturunagaram after the outbreak of Covid.
For 2021-22, the State government selected 16,468 beneficiaries from the primitive vulnerable tribal groups such as Kolam, Thoti, Chenchu and Kondareddy to roll-out this initiative through 404 Anganwadi centres. The project is being supervised by Governor Tamilisai Soundararajan on a regular basis.
“In Phase-2, we got the food products produced externally. But last year, we developed competence among tribal communities to produce, process and package the food on their own, so that they are empowered to become nutritional entrepreneurs,” says Aravazhi Selvaraj, CEO-AIP, ICRISAT.
This year, the food is being produced at FSSAI-licensed nutri-food processing units led by Joint Liability Groups (JLGs) run by tribal women.
“The raw ingredients are being purchased from tribal farmer FPOs through backward integration. From production to processing and consumption, all stakeholders in the supply-chain are getting benefits of it,” says LS Kamini, deputy project manager, Tribal Welfare Department.