MSP of Minor Forest Produce

Government will introduce a mechanism, including fixing of minimum support price, to provide fair returns to nearly 100 million forest dwellers who depend on minor forest produce for their livelihood.

• This will ensure reasonable income to the poor gatherers mostly living in Maoist-affected areas where they face difficulties to bargain for fair prices for 13 types of minor forest produce (MFP)

• State government will be free to fix a price higher than the benchmark. Prices will be revised every three years. The states will no longer have monopoly in procuring these products.

• According to the proposal, Minimum Support Price (MSP) would be determined based on the baseline survey of price for each of the MFP, its cost of collection, cost of clearing and primary processing, packaging and transportation cost for each state. 

• A Pricing Cell constituted in the Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India Limited (TRIFED) would be assigned this task. 

• Thirteen forest produces namely "tendu, bamboo, mahuwa flower, mahuwa seed, sal leaf, sal seed, lac, chironjee, wild honey, myrobalan, tamarind, gums (gums karaya) and karanj" were recommended by T Haque committee constituted for studying the minimum support price issue. 

• However, mahua flower would be kept out of MSP regime as it is a source of food for members of Scheduled Tribes and other forest dwelling communities.

Background: THE Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 (PESA) was the first to assert the rights of panchayats over minor forest produce (MFP). However, hardly any state implemented the provisions of this act seriously, and the Left and other organisations fighting for tribal rights continuously demanded that forest produce gatherers must be given ownership rights and minimum support prices (MSP) in order to enable them to have a decent living.

Read Hindu article on atrocities faced by Tribal people on collecting Forest Produce