Sheti Samrudhi Yojana

What is Sheti Samrudhi Yojana?

Sheti Samrudhi Yojana is a scheme of the Department of Tribal Welfare, Government of Goa, aimed at building institutional capacity in tribal farmers' co-operatives rather than at transferring money to individual cultivators. The name translates roughly as an agricultural prosperity scheme, and its stated purpose is to facilitate and support community-level action by farmers' co-operatives to improve food security, reduce poverty, and secure sustainable management of natural resources.

The reasoning behind the design is straightforward. A tribal farmers' co-operative in Goa may have good land, willing members and a clear objective, and still fail because it cannot afford an office, a trained agriculture graduate to run it, a computer, or the stationery to keep records. Sheti Samrudhi Yojana funds exactly those unglamorous overheads.

According to the scheme notification published in the Official Gazette by the Goa Government Printing Press, the assistance covers wages for a resource person and a peon, Rs 25,000 a year for stationery and printing, office rent reimbursement, and a one-time Rs 1,00,000 for office equipment. The intent is to mobilise science and development effort; traditional knowledge alongside modern approaches, through partnerships with research institutions, NGOs, farmers' organisations and the private sector: behind these co-operatives.

This is an institutional scheme. An individual tribal farmer cannot apply for a personal benefit under Sheti Samrudhi Yojana. The route for an individual is to be a member of a registered co-operative that applies in its own name.

Who is eligible for Sheti Samrudhi Yojana?

A co-operative can apply if:

• It is a Tribal Farmers' Co-operative Organisation.
• It is registered under the Goa Co-operative Societies Act, 2001.
• Its object is to improve productivity, or to market farm or forest produce, or both.
• At least 50 percent of its members belong to the Scheduled Tribe community, evidenced by Scheduled Tribe certificates.

Who cannot apply:

• Individual farmers cannot apply for a personal benefit under this scheme. The assistance goes to the co-operative as an institution, funds its office and staff, and is accounted for by the co-operative. A tribal farmer seeking a personal input subsidy should look instead at the Department of Agriculture's own farmer schemes, which run on the Krishi Card.
• A co-operative not registered under the Goa Co-operative Societies Act, 2001 is not eligible, whatever its membership.
• A co-operative with fewer than 50 percent Scheduled Tribe members does not qualify for this particular scheme.
• A co-operative whose objects do not include improving productivity or marketing farm or forest produce falls outside the scheme's purpose.
• A co-operative that has failed to submit its annual performance report has the succeeding year's benefit held until the report is furnished.

What does Sheti Samrudhi Yojana pay?

Recurring operational support

The rent limits are enhanced by 10 percent on the actual rent fixed after every three years, which prevents the support from eroding against Goa's rental market over the life of a co-operative.

One-time capital support

A one-time grant of Rs 1,00,000 for the procurement of a desktop computer, an uninterruptible power supply, a computer table, a cupboard, a table and chairs.

How wages are handled. Wages for the resource person and the peon are paid by the Directorate of Tribal Welfare directly, on a monthly basis, against attendance submitted by the farmer co-operative. This is a useful design detail: the co-operative does not have to front salaries out of its own funds and wait for reimbursement.

How the rest is released. The sanctioned amount is disbursed in two instalments. The first instalment is 50 percent of the total sanctioned. The balance is released only on submission of a utilisation certificate, duly verified by the Zonal Agriculture Officer.

Continuation. To draw the benefit in a subsequent year, the co-operative must submit an annual performance report, verified, signed and recommended by the concerned Zonal Agriculture Officer. Failure to submit it puts the following year's benefit on hold until the report is furnished.

What documents are required?

Membership and legal status

A co-operative formed within the last two years may furnish the audit report of the last financial year only.

Identification and operational

Project and compliance

The project report should cover the activities the co-operative will undertake for the development and growth of agriculture, the management of community forest produce, or the registration of claims of forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional forest dwellers.

How to apply for Sheti Samrudhi Yojana

1. Obtain the prescribed application form; either print it from the scheme notification published by the Goa Government Printing Press, or collect a hard copy from your Zonal Agriculture Officer. Contact details are on agri.goa.gov.in.
2. Pass the necessary resolution in the co-operative and gather the legal documents; registration certificate, constitution, list of office bearers and the audit reports.
3. Collect member documents — Scheduled Tribe certificates covering at least 50 percent of the membership, Krishi Card abstracts and Aadhaar copies for all members, and the co-operative's bank passbook copy.
4. Prepare the brief project report setting out the agricultural, forest-produce or forest-rights activities the co-operative will undertake, and sign the undertaking on the use of scheme resources.
5. Submit the duly filled and signed form with all documents to the Zonal Agriculture Officer, and keep a complete photocopy set for the co-operative's records.

What happens after you apply?

Verification and forwarding. The Zonal Agriculture Officer verifies the application and all the documents named in the scheme guidelines, then forwards the complete package to the Director of Tribal Welfare for approval and sanction.

Scrutiny and sanction. The Director of Tribal Welfare scrutinises the form and documents, and on satisfactory scrutiny sanctions the proposal and the amount to be disbursed to the co-operative.

First instalment. Fifty percent of the sanctioned amount is released to the co-operative.

Utilisation certificate. The co-operative submits a utilisation certificate for the first instalment to the Zonal Agriculture Officer, who monitors the functioning of the co-operative, verifies and signs the certificate, and forwards it to the Director of Tribal Welfare.

Balance release. On receipt of the verified utilisation certificate, the Director of Tribal Welfare releases the balance amount.

Subsequent years. The co-operative files an annual performance report, verified, signed and recommended by the Zonal Agriculture Officer. Without it, the next year's benefit is held.

Why proposals stall under Sheti Samrudhi Yojana

• Registration not under the Goa Co-operative Societies Act, 2001. A society registered under another statute does not qualify.
• Scheduled Tribe membership below 50 percent. The certificates must actually demonstrate the threshold across the membership.
• Missing audit reports. Two years of audit reports are required, unless the co-operative is under two years old.
• No PWD rent certificate. A rent claim without the Public Works Department (Building Division) certificate will not be met.
• Utilisation certificate not filed. This is the single most common reason the second 50 percent never arrives.
• Annual performance report not filed. The next year's benefit is held, and the hold continues until the report is furnished.
• Incomplete member documents. Aadhaar and Krishi Card abstracts are required for all members, not only the office bearers, and partial sets slow verification considerably.

Where to get help

• Zonal Agriculture Officer, the first point of contact for forms, submission, verification and the utilisation certificate. Contact details are published on agri.goa.gov.in.
• Directorate of Tribal Welfare, Government of Goa. The sanctioning and disbursing authority. See tribalwelfare.goa.gov.in.
• Official Gazette notification. The full scheme text is published by the Goa Government Printing Press at goaprintingpress.gov.in.

There is no application fee. Because the scheme funds a co-operative's running costs year after year, the discipline that matters most is record-keeping: the utilisation certificate and the annual performance report are what keep the money flowing.

How to check your application status

Sheti Samrudhi Yojana runs entirely offline, so there is no online tracking ID or portal dashboard to log into. A co-operative has to follow up directly with the officials handling its file, and where to call depends on which stage the file is at.

If the application was recently submitted and sanction is awaited:

• Contact the Zonal Agriculture Officer to whom the form was submitted. This office holds the application until verification is complete and can confirm whether the documents were found in order, whether any paper is still pending, and whether the file has already been forwarded to the Director of Tribal Welfare.
• Quote the date of submission and the co-operative's registration number when asking, since offline files are usually tracked by these rather than by any digital reference number.

If the file has already been forwarded for sanction:

• Contact the Directorate of Tribal Welfare, Government of Goa (see tribalwelfare.goa.gov.in for current office contact details). This is the sanctioning authority, so it can confirm whether the proposal has been sanctioned, and if so, for what amount.

If the first instalment has been sanctioned and the second is awaited:

• The balance depends entirely on the co-operative's own utilisation certificate having reached the Director of Tribal Welfare. Check first with the Zonal Agriculture Officer on whether the certificate submitted by the co-operative has been verified and forwarded; a status query here is really a check on the co-operative's own paperwork as much as on the department's processing.

If a subsequent year's payment has not arrived:

• The most common cause is a pending annual performance report. Before escalating, confirm with the co-operative's own office bearers that this report was actually filed with, and recommended by, the Zonal Agriculture Officer for the year in question. A missing or unsigned report will hold the payment regardless of how many times the Directorate is contacted.

Because there is no SMS alert or online reference number in this scheme, keeping a dated, photocopied record of every submission (the application, the utilisation certificate, and each year's performance report) is the only reliable way for a co-operative to establish exactly what has and has not reached the department when following up.