Honourable President gave away the awards today at President\’s house, inspired the innovators through her interactions with them one by one, going into many details. She showed special concern for rained farming. About half of india is bound to remain rain fed. Many times, she recalled that farmers lose their crop because of dry spell after first rain. The stationery drip may cost a lot, and water availability is very poor; How to provide life saving irrigation in such situation was the question She suggested what one may call, \’mobile drip\’ that is a hand drawn trolley which will provide droplets at teh base of the crop plants and will eb pulled by human power. This was told to us on 22nd and in the last few days, the first few prototypes were presented. She suggested some further improvements and these prototypes supported by NIF are likely to be ready in next three days by three innovators viz., dhonsi, mansukh bhai jagani, and gopal bhai suratia. We have to take this idea forward and see if in the coming season, government will replicate this idea and provide succour to the drought affected farmers.

Anil K Gupta