Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat along with his cabinet colleague Harak Singh Rawat reviewed the plan mooted by Patanjali, christened as Sahyog, in the presence of the close aide of Yoga Guru Baba Ramdev, Acharya Balkrishna in Dehradun on Saturday. The Chief Minister asked the officials concerned to prepare a draft agreed by both upon which would be based the memorandum of understanding to be signed later by both the State Government and Patanjali to pave the way for both contributing to the development of the State with mutual assistance.
“For herbal cultivation and marketing, Patanjali has suggested a single window system. We are convinced that promoting herbal cultivation requires making it profitable for the farmers. To ensure this, we will provide the farmers with the seeds to be provided by Patanjali to us. AYUSH if promoted rightly can generate employment opportunities galore for the rural people in the hills. There is a great potential of coordinated development in animal husbandry and horticulture too. We would promote things together on the basis of clusters,” CM said while thanking Baba Ramdev and Acharya Balkrishna for the positive support Patanjali has pledged to the development of the State as an antidote to migration.
During the meeting, an agreement was reached to open a laboratory for the research students of Uttarkahand Ayurveda University (UAU). Besides, for the procurement of food grains, the State Government would provide cluster based marketing facility to Patanjali. Patanjali on its part would launch contract farming in one village under the category of cluster work. Patanjali would fix the minimum support price (MSP) for the herbal products shortly. Patanjali would also develop Sushila Tiwari Herbal Garden as a model aside from founding a nursery at Muni Ki Reti, now under the control of the forest department.
The garden will be developed as a tourist spot. Animal husbandry department has storage of cow urine while Patanjali has storage of silage (fodder). Both would exchange their stock as per the prescribed terms and condition. It is learnt that the animal husbandry department has sought 1,073 metric tonne silage.
The department has already started providing milk to Patanjali on trial following which they would provide 12000 litire milk per day to Patanjali. The badri cow conservation scheme now being executed at Champawat district would later be given to Patanjali for taking care of the bovines.
Tourism department said that the people of 12 villages where infrastructure is being developed with the assistance of Asian Development Bank (ADB) would be trained by Patanjali to enable them to earn more through adopting panchkarma, yoga and ayurvedic therapy. Similarly, there is a proposal to hand over the closed tourist centres to Patanjali for their revival as a pilot project. Patanjali agreed to develop hygiene facility at the aaganwadi centres based in Haridwar district during the meeting. A detailed discussion was held too on cooperatives, aromatic plant, bee (apiculture), herbal and polyp documentation. It was attended among others by the additional chief secretary Omprakash and secretary R Meenaskshisundarm.