Manual Paddy Transplanter

Name : Ranjit Mirigmirig-rice-planter

District & State :  Sambalpur, Orissa

Category : Agricultural (General)

Award :   State

Award Function :   7th National Grassroots Innovation Awards

Award Year : 2013

Innovation Description

  • IPR Status

ranjit-rice-planterFacing labour scarcity for transplanting paddy seedlings in the field, Ranjit Mirig (60) developed a manual paddy transplanter to do the same. He developed the first prototype in 1986 and kept on modifying it till he could develop a successful model in 2008. Facilitated by NIF, the transplanter has been further modified with the help of IIT Kharagpur.

Ranjit Mirig was born in a poor Dalit farming family and could not study much because of financial problems. In 1986, after many years of having troubles in dealing with farm labourers for rice cultivation, he decided to make machine that can help him be independent. He was tired of labour costs, difficult labour management and unfair demands from labourers. He started work on a paddy transplanter then. It took him over 25 years to come up with a satisfactorily working model and the journey has been tough. In one of his poetic moments, he says,

“Panth hai pathreela, jaana hai door. Pau ka chala gir jaaye per jaana hai zaroor.” (The path is rocky, the destination is far. My feet may hurt but I cannot stop.)

When he started working on the paddy transplanter, he could not believe that Indian scientists had sent successful space missions but no one had been able to make a proper paddy transplanter for Indian farmers. This inspired him to work on this problem. He says that often he was so lost in his work that he would forget to eat or sleep, almost have accidents on the road, and sometimes his wife would be angry with him for not drinking his tea while it was still warm. A couple of times, he recalls, the tea would go cold and flies would drop into it; when his wife got angry, he would simply pick out the flies and drink the tea.

http://nif.org.in/innovation/manual-paddy-transplanter/511

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