In news : Recently, the Minister of State for AYUSH in his written reply to Lok Sabha has mentioned e Charak portal & stated that it is one of the initiatives of the ministry used for promotion and marketing of medicinal plants/herbs.
What is the e Charak portal/platform?
- The e-CHARAK an e-channel for Herbs, Aromatic, Raw material and knowledge is a platform to enable information exchange between various stakeholders mainly farmers involved in the medicinal plants sector across the country
- The e-CHARAK application supports different local languages and it also provides fortnightly market price of 100 Medicinal Plants from 25 herbal markets across India.
Who developed it?
The National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB), Ministry of AYUSH and Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) have jointly developed e-CHARAK mobile application as well as web portal for the promotion and marketing of medicinal plants/herbs.
Uses of e-Charak
- It serves as a virtual marketplace for buyers and sellers of medicinal plants sector to interact with each other.
- It serves as a virtual showcase to display products and services related to the medicinal plants sector.
- It serves as a knowledge repository of technologies, market information and other resources related to the medicinal plants sector.
e-CHARAK helps its users in the following ways
- Get better markets for products/services.
- Save time and energy in identifying right customers
- Get to know the value of one’s goods
- Get rightful share of benefits
- Make better decisions – what & how much to produce
Significance:
This application and online platform would create a vivid transparent, workable trade linkages among the producers & purchasers.Creation of e-charak is a way forward of Digital India Programme
The National Medicinal Plants Board (NMPB)
- It was set up by the government of India in the year 2000
- Currently, the board is located in the Ministry of AYUSH
- NMPB supports programs for quality assurance and standardization through:
- development of Good Agricultural and Collection Practices (GACPs)
- development of monographs laying down standards of quality, safety and efficacy
- development of agro-techniques and credible institution a mechanism for certification of quality of raw drugs, seeds and planting material
