[Assam] State innovator develops ploughing machine (The Assam Tribune. 25.12.2008)

[Buljit Buragohain]

State innovator develops ploughing machine

Ajit Patowary
 GUWAHATI, Dec 24 – Uddhab Bharali, 45, an Assam innovator, who has already earned worldwide fame for his mechanical devices, has developed a ploughing machine for the poor farmers. 

The ploughing machine, the 80th of his innovations in 13 years, weighing 48 kg and priced at Rs 35,000, can be run on kerosene. It needs some amount of petrol or a 24-volt battery for starting its engine and can be operated even by the young people, said the innovator.

Bharali, an AMIE engineer, told this correspondent that the price of the machine included also the cost of its battery and engine. The machine can simultaneously plough, pulverize and de-weed the tilling field. It can also be used for pumping water.

He has also developed a weed-cutter and a five-foot-deep-capacity trench-digging machine. Both the weed-cutting and trench-digging machines, his 79th and 81st innovations, have proved to be the most useful devices for tea gardens. The trench-digging machine is useful for the Telecom department as well and it can dig a five-foot-deep trench in a two-metre-long area, using 1 HP, within five minutes. 

The National Innovation Foundation of India (NIFI)had granted recognition to Bharali’s works about five years back and he was rewarded with the Master Innovator Award in November 2006.

Bharali’s pomegranate de-seeder was well received by countries like the USA, Turkey and Egypt. At present, each of Turkey and Egypt has placed orders for 100 pieces of the machine, and, on that matter, the two countries are negotiating with the NIFI.

This innovator has also developed this year a bamboo-slicing machine with assistance from the NEDFi. He has developed an eri cocoon opener and a lap-cutting machine respectively for the Rural Technology Action Group (RUTAG) and the IIT-Guwahati. For the Central Silk Board’s Lahdoigarh Central Eri and Muga Research and Training Institute, Bharali has developed one muga waft reeling machine this year. 

Bharali set up his UKB Agrotech in North Lakhimpur KB Road area in 2003 as a full-fledged machine research and design centre. Financial problems made him sell the technology of his 500-kg-per-day-capacity Cassava Peeling Machine to a Guwahati-based manufacturer in 2003.

Now, a Singapore-based company is pressing Bharali hard for the design of a 10,000-tonne-a-day-capacity cassava peeler. This company has also asked Bharali to incorporate the components of chip making and drying in the machine, Bharali said. For an Ethiopian company, Bharali had developed one manual bamboo-splitting machine in December last year. 

The Delhi Doordarshan Kendra recently produced a one-and-half-a-hour documentary on Bharali. The same Doordarshan centre has proposed another documentary on him.

Moreover, CNBC 17 of the USA had also sent a team to make a documentary on this innovator last year, following a news item on him in The Chicago Tribune. The pomegranate de-seeder and the passion fruit gel extractor developed by Bharali impressed The Chicago Tribune journalist Haidy Louriel at a national level innovation exhibition in Imphal in December 2006. The Discovery Channel had brought Bharali to limelight in 2005 through a documentary on innovators in its ‘World Beyond Today’ programme.

The Manchester-based The MIT Journal listed Bharali’s pomegranate de-seeder as a prestigious machine. The journal described the machine developed by the Assam innovator as a much advanced one compared to a similar device developed by the Americans in California.

Meanwhile, requests for his profile are pouring in from leading newspapers like The Business Standard, Bharali said.

(The Assam Tribune. 25.12.2008)


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