MUKTI Community Shop to Support Villagers during Lockdown due to COVID19

30-35% of the people around Sunderban area go to nearby districts for earning their living. After this lock-down due to COVID19, many people got stuck in their respective job locations and were not in a position to send money to their families. Some people struggled and managed to return to their homes after few days but they were unable to get their due amount from their respective contractors. Many people were in a dire situation and was not having enough food at their home.

In this area many people are directly related to farming. The challenges they started facing after the lock-down, is that there were no transport to carry the produced vegetables to the nearest haat (market) which is around 15 kms from this place. Added to that, the local residents of those areas had to buy vegetables at 4-5 times the standard rate.

So clearly there was a Demand and Supply issue as the Supply Chain Management (SCM) got affected. MUKTI identified this issue and came up with the idea of  “Shop-on-Wheels” supported by the initiative MUKTI Community Shop.

MUKTI purchased all vegetables from the respective farmers and started selling the vegetables in cart to local residents of Purba Sridharpur, Nagendrapur Gram Panchayat, Uttar Kankandighi, Paschim Jota.

Each cart has 2 MUKTI Volunteers to manage the entire effort of buying the vegetables from the sellers and selling it to the buyers at a break even (no profit, no loss) price. So MUKTI managed to recreate the supply chain which got disrupted due to this lock-down for COVID19 and in the process saved thousands of life around Sunderban area.

MUKTI is planning to expand there “Shop-on-Wheels” program to some other villages like Domkol, Baradanagar, Purba Jota etc. These areas are much more in need of this service in this situation.

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