NRLM changes life of many rural poor through its support structure

Udhampur: NRLM changes life of many rural poor through its support structure

Fruit, vegetable processing by using solar dryer scripts success story of Sushma Rani

UDHAMPUR, MARCH 04 (PTK): National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM) – Aajeevika was launched by the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), Government of India in June 2011 as a restructured version of Swarna Jayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojna (SGSY).

The NRLM strives towards unleashing the entrepreneurial capability of rural communities and individuals by providing them with an appropriate platform through a dedicated and sensitive support structure.

In Udhampur district, Illiteracy, ignorance, insufficient awareness and lack of organized effort appear to be the root cause of the major problems of socio-economic, educational, health and backwardness of the rural people.

Agriculture, physical labour and collection of minor forest products are the main sources of their income.

Solar dryers are a simple but high-impact technology solution. Through this service, a wide variety of solar-dried vegetables, fruits, greens, herbs, immunity boosters etc can be value added with a shelf life of more than a year. With solar Drying, all the nutritional qualities, colour, taste and flavour of the original product are retained, resulting in efficient value addition.

To prevent wastages of vegetables and fruits, the Mission took up solar drying. What started as wastage prevention has now become a full-scale livelihood program. For this purpose, various SHG members are identified to generate livelihood earning from this technology with proper orientation of the use of this technology. The potential for rural women’s livelihood through solar drying is immense. The horticulture department is keen to associate with the SHGs in J&K, through JKRLM, for solar drying based livelihood generation programs. The SHG members from Block Chenani, Ramnagar and Dudu Basantgarh installed these solar dryers with help of the horticulture department on 50% subsidy basis.:-PTK