Name: Ranjit Mirig District: Sambalpur State: Orissa Category: Plant variety Award: State Description: Facing labour scarcity for transplanting paddy seedlings in the field, Ranjit Mirig (60) developed a manual paddy transplanter to do the same. He developed the first prototype in 1986 and kept on modifying it till he could develop a successful model in 2008. Facilitated by NIF, the transplanter has been further modified with the help of IIT Kharagpur. Ranjit Mirig was born in a poor Dalit farming family and could not study much because of financial problems. In 1986, after many years of having troubles in dealing with farm labourers for rice cultivation, he decided to make machine that can help him be independent. He was tired of labour costs, difficult labour management and unfair demands from labourers. He started work on a paddy transplanter then. It took him over 25 years to come up with a satisfactorily working model and the journey has been tough. In one of his poe...