New Katol Naka Square, Gorewada Katol Road, Nagpur-440013.
Gadchiroli Agarbatti Project
Gadchiroli Agarbatti Project (GAP) is an initiative of National Bamboo Mission (NBM) Gadchiroli District Administration and Forest Department, through agarbatti making to provide sustainable solution to the most acute problem, employment of the district using the natural raw material which is available in abundance in the district.
Gadchiroli District has Left-wing violence, has discouraged private investments in the region. At the same time, given that 76 per cent of the district is covered by forests, opportunities to make a living from agriculture are quite limited and prone to the vagaries of rainfall.
GAP primary objective is to train and employ rural men and women of the district in raw agarbatti production and its related activities which shall in turn be sold to traders/ companies involved in incense stick trading/production.
Even during COVID crises GAP produced 150 tons of agarbatti in April and May 2020 and distributed around Rs.30 lacs as wages in Gadchiroli.
Apart from Machine made raw agarbatti production, the recent addition to GAP is Hand Rolled Agarbattis which are sold to Cycle Agarbatti, Mysore.
The 300 women were provided on the job training and they produced around 4500 kilos of hand rolled agarbattis generating revenue of Rs.324000 and wage disbursement of Rs.153000/-.
Under the Gadchiroli Agarbatti project 5200 tonnes of raw agarbatti has been produced so far and an income of 36 crores has been obtained. So far 1200 women have been given employment and 9 crore 36 lakhs have been paid as wages.