Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana (VKY)

What is Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana?

Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana, commonly written as VKY and known in Gujarati as Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana or the "friend of the forest dweller" scheme, is the flagship tribal development programme of the Tribal Development Department, Government of Gujarat. The department describes it as the Chief Minister's 10-Point Programme for tribal development, launched on 27 February 2007.

Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana is not a cash benefit scheme. VKY is an umbrella framework that pools resources from the Gujarat government, centrally sponsored schemes and private sector initiatives, and directs them at the state's tribal belt against a common set of ten outcomes. This distinction matters more than any other fact on this page: a family does not "apply for VKY", it applies for the constituent scheme, a scholarship, a house, an irrigation subsidy, a skill training course, that VKY funds.

According to the Tribal Development Department, the programme's stated purpose is to close the economic and social gap between tribal and non-tribal areas and to raise the Human Development Index in the tribal belt, through what the department calls a rights-based approach with measurable outcomes.

The scale of the tribal belt VKY covers, as recorded by the department:

• 89.17 lakh tribal population in Gujarat.
• 14 tribal districts, running along the eastern belt from Ambaji to Umargam.
• 25 notified Scheduled Tribes.
• 14.75 per cent of the total state budget allocated to tribal development.
• 62 per cent literacy in the tribal population.
• 14 ITDP (Integrated Tribal Development Project) offices coordinating delivery on the ground.

What are the ten points of Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana?

The Tribal Development Department organises VKY around ten pillars:

1. Employment: doubling tribal family incomes through higher agricultural productivity, animal husbandry and skill training.
2. Education; expanding access to quality schooling and higher education, including hostels, residential schools and scholarships.
3. Economic development: infrastructure and market linkages, supported by a Rs 1 crore annual allocation per taluka.
4. Health, universal health coverage and disease prevention in tribal areas, including sickle cell and malaria control work.
5. Housing, shelter for all tribal families within a five-year horizon.
6. Drinking water; safe drinking water access, with a target of 25 per cent piped supply coverage stated by the department.
7. Irrigation; assured agricultural income through water conservation, check dams, lift irrigation and modern on-farm water techniques.
8. Electrification — universal household and village connectivity, including solar alternatives for remote hamlets.
9. Roads, all-weather connectivity extended to hamlets with populations under 250, which ordinary rural road norms would leave out.
10. Urban development, growth-oriented development of tribal towns, with broadband expansion.

Taken together the ten points describe an area-development strategy rather than a welfare transfer. Roads, water supply, electrification and irrigation works benefit a whole habitation; education, housing and livelihood components reach identified families.

Who is eligible under Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana?

You are covered if:

• You belong to one of the 25 notified Scheduled Tribes of Gujarat and hold a valid ST caste certificate issued by the competent authority.
• You are a resident of Gujarat, and for area-specific components, a resident of a notified tribal area or a village covered by a VKY works plan.
• You meet the specific conditions of the constituent scheme you are applying to, an income ceiling for a scholarship, a landholding record for an irrigation subsidy, an age band for a skill course.

You cannot apply if:

• You are not from a notified Scheduled Tribe of Gujarat. Individual VKY benefits are not available to you, although you may still use infrastructure built under the programme.
• You are looking for a single VKY cash payment. No such payment exists, and anyone promising one in exchange for a fee is running a fraud.
• You do not meet the constituent scheme's own criteria. VKY coverage does not override a scheme's income limit, age limit or land requirement.

How to apply under Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana

Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana has no common application form. The correct route is to identify the constituent scheme and apply to the department that runs it.

1. Get your ST caste certificate first. Apply to the Mamlatdar of your taluka or through the Digital Gujarat portal. Nearly every tribal scheme in Gujarat stops at this document, and getting it early saves a season.
2. Identify the constituent scheme you need. Education and hostel schemes, scholarships and livelihood schemes sit with the Tribal Development Department; agriculture and irrigation components with the Agriculture Department through iKhedut; housing with the rural development machinery.
3. Visit your ITDP office or taluka office. The Integrated Tribal Development Project office for your district is the single best place to ask which component covers your need and where the form is filed. There are 14 such offices across the tribal belt.
4. File the constituent scheme's application with its own document set: caste certificate, Aadhaar, residence proof, bank passbook, and an income certificate or land record where the scheme requires it.
5. Keep the acknowledgement with its application or file number, and follow up at the same office. For schemes filed on a departmental portal such as Digital Gujarat or iKhedut, track the status online using that number.

For village-level works. A road, a check dam, a water supply line, street lighting, the route is different again. These are proposed through the gram panchayat and taluka planning process, not by individual application. A resident who wants a habitation-level work taken up should raise it in the gram sabha so that it enters the taluka's VKY works plan.

How to check the status of a VKY benefit

Because the benefit comes from a constituent scheme, status is tracked on that scheme's system:

• iKhedut (ikhedut.gujarat.gov.in) for agriculture, horticulture, animal husbandry and irrigation components; track by application number.
• Digital Gujarat for scholarships and certificate services.
• The ITDP office for departmental schemes handled on file, where the acknowledgement number and the applicant's name are enough to trace the case.

Why VKY-linked applications get rejected

• No valid ST caste certificate, or a certificate issued by an authority not competent to issue it.
• Applying to VKY generally instead of to a named constituent scheme, which leaves nothing for an office to process.
• Missing the constituent scheme's window, iKhedut components in particular open for limited periods.
• Income certificate absent or expired for income-linked components such as scholarships and housing.
• Bank account not Aadhaar-seeded, so the DBT payment fails even after sanction.
• Name mismatch between the caste certificate, Aadhaar and bank records.
• Budget or target exhausted for the taluka in that financial year.

Help and grievance redressal

• Taluka level: the taluka development office and the Extension Officer for tribal schemes.
• District level: the ITDP office for your district, and the district Social Welfare or Tribal Development officer.
• State level: the Tribal Development Department, Block No. 2, 5th Floor, New Sachivalaya, Gandhinagar 382010, telephone +91 79 23257703, office hours 10:30 am to 6:10 pm.
• Hostel and education queries: the Samras Hostel helpline for ST students, +91 79 23257711.

The department also works through the Commissionerate of Tribal Development, the Gujarat Tribal Development Corporation, the Gujarat State Tribal Education Society and the Gujarat Tribal Research and Training Society, each of which runs its own set of schemes under the VKY umbrella.

No fee is payable for any VKY constituent scheme application. No official will ask for your OTP, and no agent can charge to "add your name" to a tribal development list.