Agartala:Tripura has targeted to set up 40 smart villages under Indo German Development Cooperation (IGDC) of GTZ mission in Dhalai and North Tripura soon.
“The smart villages to be tagged as green village come up with all modern communication facilities for the dwellers, bio-resource based livelihood activities and assurance of sustai-nable income,” informed Chief Executive Officer of IGDC Tripura Dr A K Gupta.
Besides, successful implementation of the project in 104 backward most villages of the state, IGDC Tripura team visited Germany at the end of last year to explore opportu-nities for extension of the project and it clicked now, Dr Gupta stated.
IGDC is going to be concluded in next financial year. It was started with the objective to generate at least Rs 360 Cr fund with the seed money of Rs 90 Cr of GTZ through fund convergence in 2009.
However, in recent visit of GTZ mission (Frankfurt based KFW group) has agreed to provide additional funding of Rs 1000-1200 Cr in second phase of the project to promote green economic activities and development of best land use model for the tribals, he stated.
According to Dr Gupta, economic intervention in livelihood of poor tribals through IGDC project, Tripura could able to reduce Jhum (slashes and burn method of agriculture) practice to 47 percent while 28000 tribal families have come into settled agriculture in the project area.
He pointed out that three-tier plantation of medicinal plants, bamboos and other high yielding agricultural crops in the project villages on patta land, has been given under Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recogni-tion of Forest Rights) Act has assured Rs 3000 income to each of the families.
“We are able to cater sufficient amount of Kalamegh leaves and Satmuli tubes to Kerala based Ayurveda medicinal companies from IGDC villages for past few years. Apart from that, forward market linkage of best quality bamboo and 18 spices varieties including turmeric and ginger have changed the livelihood of our village,” said Ms Laxmi Marak, one of the successful IGDC beneficiaries.
She said IGDC has begun now to assess land based climate finance possibilities in tribal dominated Dhalai district of Tripura besides, identifying existing land use systems the villages.
Estimation of biophysical potential for different land use patterns in the project is the funda-mental of the concept but methodology drafted to qualify and quantify adap-tation benefits of mitigation in the state, she said adding that assessment of carbon finance option is expected to provide a sustainable source of additional funds to implement village development plan.
Meanwhile, the key planner of IGDC implemen-tation in Tripura, the then forest minister and incumbent Loksabha MP Jitendra Chaudhury said that FWF group of GTZ mission appreciated the financial management, done by the village development planning and implemen-tation committee (VDPIC) headed by village chief.
He claimed that the idea of VDPICs was mooted from the grass-root empower-ment program of the state government model of bottom-up planning, imple-mentation and management approach. (UNI)