Srinagar- Mohamad Shaban Bhat, 58, was struggling to sell Kahzaban (Arnebia benthami) and other medicinal plants that he had grown over 20 kanal of land in Central Kashmir’s Budgam district with the help of Jammu and Kashmir forest department and he was unable to find buyers.
Bhat regretted that his investment of lakhs of rupees in growing medicinal plants got wasted. His worries, however, subsided when he came to know about an e-Charak mobile application as well as web portal for the promotion and marketing of medicinal plants and herbs.
“An official of the forest department informed me about the online portal. I don’t know how to use it but my son is familiar with the portal,” said Bhat.
Within a month, Bhat sold all his medicinal plants online and generated good revenue in return.
The e-Charak mobile application and web portal was jointly launched by National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB), Ministry of AYUSH and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) for the promotion and marketing of medicinal plants/herbs.
The e-channel is a platform to enable information exchange between various stakeholders, mainly farmers involved in the medicinal plants sector across the country. The application supports different local languages and it also provides a fortnightly market price of 100 Medicinal Plants from 25 herbal markets across India.
Notably, the Jammu and Kashmir government is keen to promote and encourage the people to cultivate the medicinal plants in the valley. The government is making a strategy and mechanism for developing and cultivation of Medicinal plants across the UT.
The government has so far developed three nurseries of Medicinal Plants at Gurez Bandipora, Bhaderwah in Doda and Tapyal in Samba. According to officials, the centre has approved medicinal plant nurseries for four more districts of the UT and the work on them will start soon.
Pertinent to mention that the UT is famous for its rich variety of plants with medicinal qualities, which are used in medical treatments. However, the demand from other countries have made medicinal plants vulnerable to smuggling.
“This is being done to reduce the stress on endangered medicinal plants and stop the smuggling,” said an official of the forest department.
He said various on spot registration of farmers and growers have been organized for mass cultivation of Medicinal Plants in the UT and training programs for 1500 persons have been done so far.
The government has launched the online application with a view to provide an online market portal for trade of medicinal plants. The online portal could be accessed either through an internet browser or the mobile app which could be downloaded in Google play store in any android mobile phone.
In this application and online platform, farmers and collectors could display their produce in possession & buyers like traders, manufactures, exporters could look into their requirements. This application and online platform would create vivid transparent, workable trade linkages among the producers and purchasers.
“The creation of e-charak is a way forward of the Digital India Programme,” said an official of the AYUSH.
For Junaid Ahamd Najar, the portal has revolutionized the medicinal farming sector and has made it easy for growers to sell their products online.
“Earlier it was very difficult to find the buyer and then you had to bargain on rates. Now the rates are fixed on websites and the buyers choose the product online,” said Najar, a resident of North Kashmir’s Gurez.
Waheed-ul-Hassan, technical officer at the J&K Medicinal Plants Board told Kashmir Observer that rates for the medicinal plants are provided by Regional Cum Facilitation Centres (RCFCs) to the growers, who put it on the web portal.
The RCFCs have been established by the National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB).
He further said that the RCFC NR-II of SKUAST-Kashmir is exclusively looking after the medicinal plants sector in two UTs of J&K and Ladakh.
He said the department informs every grower how to use the application in every programme.
The demand for medicinal plants is increasing day by day and the government is encouraging more and more people to cultivate the plants in their land which will ultimately boost the economy of the region.
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