With the active support of the office of Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and the Department of Science and Technology, RuTAG 2.0 was established at IIT Roorkee with an aim to provide necessary and synergy support to organizations involved in development and standardization of new technologies. RuTAG 2.0, IIT Roorkee is working primarily for providing technical support to villagers, farmers and artisans, and it has full support of IIT faculty in developing new technologies for community.
Proposals were invited for RuTAG 2.0 by the PSA Office, and IIT Roorkee also submitted a proposal with its vision to provide development and support to the rural people and farmer communities of different states of India. The proposal primarily focusses on several key sectors, including agriculture, technology, and environmental sustainability, which was subsequently approved and funded. The project started on October 10, 2023 with approval of following 4 projects.
Development of small scale multi millet threshing machine for marginal farmers
Development of Saptdhanur-ark (Solution) motorized grinding machine retaining properties of manual grinding to enhance natural farming.
Development and demonstration of Stationary solar assisted evaporated cooling-based fruits and vegetable preservative vending kiosk.
Development of Biodegradable plastic material by using Hemp for sustainable future.
These technologies will be developed with the following objectives.
To develop and transfer 2-3 demand driven technologies/year to the field for assessing the socio-economic impacts, sustainability and value addition at the grass root level in remote hills and other rural areas.
To organize 3-4 workshops per year inviting NGOs, stakeholders/nodal agencies and the entrepreneurs in the hilly and remote areas.
To demonstrate the technology to local communities involved at grass root level for livelihood enhancement in different areas.
To develop a comprehensive business plan and successfully commercialize the products that are developed.
The project will primarily focus on several key sectors, including agriculture, technology, and environmental sustainability. The project will implement various activities, such as the development of a multi-millet threshing machine, vegetable vending kiosk, biodegradable plastic from hemp, and a fertilizer grinder to promote natural farming.
RuTAG Centre, IIT Roorkee primarily focuses on offering technical assistance to villagers, farmers, and artisans, with comprehensive backing from IIT faculty in developing new technologies for the community.
Introduction with Gap areas and Current status
The following existing technologies are identified for interventions in RuTAG2.0 at IIT Roorkee through interactions with NGOs and cluster groups:
Development of small scale multi millet threshing machine for marginal farmers.
Gaps: The traditional method of threshing, pearling, and Dehusking of millets consumes a lot of time, labour, cost, and drudgery. It takes about five hours of effort for the threshing and pearling of 100 kg of finger millet grains and quality of grain also reduces. Due to this, the need of mechanical millet thresher cum pearler was required. Small scale multi millet threshing machine technologies are not available for marginal farmers.
Development of Saptdhanurark (Solution) motorized grinding machine retaining properties of manual grinding to enhance natural farming.
Gaps: Natural Farming has been implemented by the Government of Himachal Pradesh as the ‘Prakritik Kheti Khushhal Kisan’ Yojana (PK3Y) since May 2018. This Yojana is based on a holistic system built upon principles of Zero Budget Natural Farming, as propounded by Padmashri Subhash Palekar. This has proven to be a scalable model of Low-Input cost and productive farming output for a positive impact on Smallholder producer income systems. Preparation of Sapatdhanurark is very laborious work. It is a very tedious and time-consuming process if they have to prepare material in large quantity. Till now no mechanized machine has been developed.
Development and demonstration of Stationary solar assisted evaporated cooling-based fruits and vegetable preservative vending kiosk.
Gaps: Natural Farming has been implemented by the Government of Himachal Pradesh as the ‘Prakritik Kheti Khushhal Kisan’ Yojana (PK3Y) since May 2018. This Yojana is based on a holistic system built upon principles of Zero Budget Natural Farming, as propounded by Padmashri Subhash Palekar. This has proven to be a scalable model of Low-Input cost and productive farming output for a positive impact on Smallholder producer income systems. Preparation of Sapatdhanurark is very laborious work. It is a very tedious and time-consuming process if they have to prepare material in large quantity. Till now no mechanized machine has been developed.
Development of Biodegradable plastic material by using Hemp for sustainable future.
Gaps: Plastic is not an environmentally sustainable material. And it is unfortunately too obvious that most recyclable plastic, that remains unchanged for 500 to 1000 years, ends up on landfills and in the sea. Therefore, to reduce the increasing environmental pollution from synthetic plastic an alternative must be developed. This need can be fulfilled by use of hemp plastic, which is 100% biodegradable if produced using only Hemp plant. Due to lack to proper methodology of making biodegradable plastics from Hemp, villagers throw away Hemp plants which can be good source of income for them as well as biodegradable plastic will led to sustainable future.
