Making Traditional Industries Competitive,
Market Driven and Productive

The Ministry of Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), Government of India launched the Scheme of Fund for Regeneration of Traditional industries (SFURTI) to make traditional industries more competitive, market driven and productive by introducing new technologies.

The main objectives of this scheme are as follows:

• To organise the traditional industries and artisans into clusters to make them competitive and provide support for their long term sustainability and economies of scale.

• To provide sustained employment for traditional industry artisans and rural entrepreneurs.

• To enhance marketability of products of such clusters by providing support for new products, design interventions, improved packaging and improvement of marketing infrastructure.

The Indian Micro Enterprises Development Foundation (IMEDF) is a special purpose vehicle of the Development Alternatives Group that accelerates the development of micro enterprises at scale.

The Scheme covers three types of interventions namely Soft interventions, Hard interventions and Thematic interventions. The Soft interventions include general awareness, skill development, design & product development whereas Hard interventions would typically include Common Facility Centres (CFCs), raw material banks, training centres, warehousing etc. The Thematic interventions lay emphasis on export promotion, brand building, e-commerce initiatives & media marketing.

The Institutional arrangement that has been put in place for effective management and delivery mechanism works like this. The Nodal Agencies like IMEDF first identifies potential clusters. Clusters could be existing clusters (Brownfield) or new clusters (Greenfield) after a thorough study. The Technical Agency helps Implementing Agency in preparation of DSRs which are submitted to MoMSME through the Nodal Agency, wherein a Scheme Steering Committee constituted by MoMSME carries out appraisal and approval of the DSR. The presentation of the DSR to the Scheme Steering Committee is done by the representatives of the Nodal Agency.

IMEDF is the first Non Government Nodal Agency to develop clusters under SFURTI project. In the first phase of the operations, the following clusters were identified, appraised, DPRs were approved and projects incubated.

• Medicinal Plant Cluster, Barauliya, Uttar Pradesh

• Nautical Artifacts Cluster, Roorkee, Uttarakhand

• Bamboo Craft Cluster, Tapi, Gujarat

• Handmade Jewellery Cluster, Mangalagiri, Andhra Pradesh

• Naturally Dyed Cluster, Sagara, Karnataka

In the subsequent phases, our first hand experience came handy and another 6 clusters were approved in various SSC meetings spread PAN India and includes clusters from handicrafts, medicinal plants, turmeric, woodcrafts, coffee etc.

• Lac and other NTFP Processing Cluster,Gumla, Jharkhand

• Sagara Woodcrafts Cluster, Shivamoga, Karnataka

• Agro Business Cluster, Kiphire, Nagaland

• Palmarosa and Lemon Grass Cluster, Mayurbhanj, Odisha

• Urmul Natural Dyeing Cluster, Bikaner District, Rajasthan

• Vishakhapatnam Coffee Cluster, Vishakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh

The journey has been interesting, challenging, educative and satisfying for the IMEDF team as we aspire to make a difference to the lives of 6500+ artisans/farmers across 11 states of India in rural areas. IMEDF SFURTI portfolio is worth Rs 2685 lakhs.

IMEDF today stands as an effective bridge between micro and small at miso level making valuable triple bottom line effects in sustainabilty livelihoods projects.■

Rabina Jaiswal
rjaiswal@devalt.org