The Special Programme
for Promotion of Millets in Tribal Areas (Millet Mission Odisha) has won the
SKOCH Award 2017 - Silver, and the SKOCH Order-of-Merit. These were conferred at the
50th SKOCH summit held at Constitution Club of India, New Delhi, 20-21 December
2017.
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| Millet Mission Delegates with SKOCH
Order-of-Merit Award at Constitution Club of India, 20 December 2017. Left to Right: Ms Diptimayee Jena, Dr Chitta Ranjan Das, Mr Pankaj Kumar, Mr Rameswar Mirdha, Prof Srijit Mishra, Mr Sadananda Majhi, Mr Ramani Ranjan Nayak, Ms Rashmi Rekha Samal. |
The SKOCH
Order-of-Merit was conferred to the Millet Mission Odisha for being among the
top 30 Transformational Innovation Projects in India. From among these, Millet
Mission Odisha was selected and conferred the SKOCH Award 2017 - Silver at the
concluding session of the 50th SKOCH summit. The selection for these awards
went through a rigorous process: scrutiny of application, jury evaluation based
on presentation, on-line voting, and experts opinion plus delegates voting at
the Summit.
 |
| SKOCH Award 2017 - Silver conferred to Special Programme for Promotion of Millets in Tribal Areas being received by
Prof Srijit Mishra, Director, NCDS on 21 December 2017, Mavlankar
Sabhagrih, Constitution Club of India, New Delhi. Left to Right: Mrs. Manisha Kochhar, Mrs Pratibha Phatak, Dr Gursharan Dhanjal, Dr. DB Phatak, Mr. NK singh, Mr. Sameer Kochhar, Dr. M Ramachandran, Prof.Srijit Mishra, Prof. VN Alok, Mr. Rohan Kochhar, Mr. Nirmal Bansal. |
The innovation for the
Programme lies in the institutional architecture where Government of Odisha
(through Department of Agriculture and Farmers' Empowerment under the aegis of
Planning and Convergence Department), Civil Society (led by Watershed Support
Services Network (WASSAN) as Programme Secretariat) and Academia (Nabakrushna
Choudhury Centre for Development Studies (NCDS) as State Secretariat) have come
together to complement and supplement each other for a people-centric
initiative to facilitate nutrition security and address climate resilience.
In this endeavour,
Government, Civil Society and Academia have come together from day one starting
from conception, to planning, to preparing guidelines, to implementation. The
institutional architecture has been designed to draw upon the advantages of
each entity, but also by providing space for flexibility that is required for a
collective endeavour and to address emerging concerns.
To address the demand
versus supply mismatch (or Chicken-Egg paradox), a framework with concurrent
emphasis on production, consumption, processing, and marketing has been
designed
The implementation of
the programme brings together science and tradition. The knowledge of improved
agronomic practices (line transplantation and system of root intensification)
and use of suitable equipment (for instance, weeder) was superimposed on the
understanding of local biodiversity and existing agricultural practices.
In its first year of
implementation (Khari 2017), the programme is operational in 28 blocks across
seven districts (Gajapati, Kalahandi, Kandhamal, Koraput, Malkangiri, Nuapada,
and Rayagada) and Millet production has
been taken up in 7,444 acres by 13,457 farmers. The Project Director,
Agricultural Technology Management Agency (PD, ATMA) is the nodal agency at the
district level who along with the Programme Secretariat work at each block with
the Facilitating Agencies (FAs) to implement the programme through the
Community Based Organisations (CBOs). The crop cutting experiments have been
promising with yield measured at 4-8 quintals/acre for line transplantation and
at 6.5 to 14 quintals/acre for system of root intensification. The Government
of Odisha is planning to extend the programme to 27 additional blocks in Kharif
2018.
Initiatives are being
taken for pilot inclusion of millets in State Nutrition Programmes (SNPs -
Anganwadi's, Mid-day Meals and Ashram Schools) and linking them to the Public
Distribution System (PDS). An urban internship has been launched to spread
knowledge on the health benefits, create awareness on contemporary as also
traditional recipes, and provide a market for the produce.
Millet Mission Odisha
will be an important partner in the initiative on National Nutrition Mission and in spirit is with the Government of India's call to the United Nations to make
2018 as the International Year of Millets.
The application for
consideration of SKOCH Innovation Award 2017 was submitted by NCDS the State
Secretariat for the Mission. The Director of NCDS, Professor Srijit Mishra who
is also spearheading the activities of the State Secretariat had made the
presentation for jury evaluation in November 2017. He has received the two awards
at the 50th SKOCH summit on behalf of all the stakeholders of Millet Mission
Odisha.
See two earlier related blogs
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