Govt’s mega OBC, SC push

Artisans working across India’s remotest corners will soon be able to enter online domestic and international markets to secure value for their produce.

In a first, the BJP-led NDA dispensation, as part of its political plan of outreach to the underprivileged, is creating an online brand for artisans from marginalised segments to sell their products locally and globally.

Called TULIP (Traditional Upliftment Livelihood Programme), this brand will provide over 1.5 crore artisans from Other Backward Classes (OBC), Scheduled Castes (SC), trans and other segments the first organised marketing platform.

“International markets for Indian artisans have never been explored before. We also do not have any system for crores of artisans linked to the financing landscape of the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment to sell their produce online. Since digital connect is now the norm, we have decided to provide these artisans a reasonably good brand and an organised way of selling things locally and internationally,” Rajan Sehgal, managing director of the National Backward Classes and SCs Finance and Development Corporation, told The Tribune today, saying the project was conceived by Social Justice Minister Virendra Kumar.

Sehgal said the Centre was already in talks with e-commerce platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, Myntra and others for domestic online sales and was eyeing the brand launch by December or latest by January.

“As far as global markets are concerned, we are going to begin negotiations with Amazon Global, Alibaba and other e-commerce retail platforms going forward,” he said, signalling India’s potential collaboration with the US and Chinese e-commerce retailers to empower artistes at home.

Officials said the project would not require artisans to hand over their inventory to the Ministry’s marketing platform. “The inventory will remain with the artisans. Their products will come to our warehouses and our platform will sell the products at a pre-determined base price plus some overhead costs. Artisans linked to the Ministry already have inventories with which they work where they are stationed. Once we link these inventories with the TULIP brand, we expect a chain reaction to follow,” said Sehgal.

In the next three months, part of the product line from Indian marginalised artisans will start going global, officials involved with the project said, adding that the choice of the acronym TULIP was conscious.

For 20 years now, the National Backward Classes and SC Finance Corporations, by extending cheap loans to artisans from marginalised sections, has created a vast pool of domestic talent — nearly 1.5 crore. At present these artisans sell mainly through physical exhibitions organised in the government system.