Forbes honours farmer whose rice changed lives….VIVEK DESHPANDE
THE National Innovation Foundation (NIF) recognised his huge contribution to Indias agriculture when it chose him for the second prize for innovation in 2005 and had him honoured by then President Abdul Kalam. In 2009, it awarded him for yet another innovation.
Now, Forbes magazine has named him in its latest issue as one of the seven rural entrepreneurs of India whose innovations are changing the lives of people across country.
Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, a marginal Dalit farmer from Nanded village of Chandrapur district, has won
many honours and felicitations for his innovation of Central Indias most popular HMT variety of rice, but his personal life remains the same: he still lives off just 1.5 acres of land gifted to his daughter-in-law by her father, and is still deprived of the credit that many believes is due to him but which is given instead to Maharashtras leading agriculture university, the Punjabrao Krishi Vidyapeeth (PKV).
The PKVs stand has been that it took the original strain from Khobragade but its scientists purified and characterised it to launch it in the market as HMT Sona. Dadaji neither has the resources nor any inclination to fight the mighty university. Instead,
he came out with yet another variety, DRK1, an acronym based on his initials. It was this variety that again won him the NIF award last year. Now he has come out with what he calls DRK (Sugandhit). This is his ninth rice variety so far, he claims.
IIM Professor and founder of Honey Bee Network Anil Gupta, who selected him for the Forbes honour, told The Indian Express: “His work is amazing. How many scientists have done something like he has done? His rice variety is grown on 1 lakh hectares in five states and still continues to diffuse all across the country.”
According to PKV’s own estimates, HMT is actually grown on more than 2 lakh hectares in Central India. Gupta laments “profiteering” by private companies from Dadaji’s innovations while sharing nothing with him. “They never thought it fit to do something for the man who lives in such penury? Amazing. I went and stayed with him in his hut.
He doesn’t even have a toilet. It’s the duty of these companies to pool in money together and help him. We are ready to mediate if required,” Gupta says.
The NIF has since been funding Dadaji’s experiments on the field.
“We have been providing him whatever funds are required,” Gupta says.
Gupta too criticises the PKV for depriving him of the credit. “It’s a sad commentary on how we deal with our innovators,” he said. The NIV is now helping him produce his own seeds, pack them and sell, Gupta said.