| Details of Innovation |
Groundnut is harvested by uprooting the whole plant by grasping its foliage. The pods are then separated by picking them individually by hand, or in bulk by twisting the roots with one hand while holding the plant firmly in the other, or by threshing ie. striking the roots on a horizontal stick or steel blade. All these methods are tedious. Marutrao Yashwant Sarode designed and fabricated a unique pod- separator that used rotating blades to snip off the pods. He used a bullock-drawn blade harrow to loosen the plants first so that they were then easy to uproot.
He had two friends, Marutrao Kadam, a cobbler, and Gangaram Sakve, a carpenter. They used to help him after finishing their own work, as they did not have any family obligations.
Marutrao got his first patent for a groundnut pod separator sealed in December 1990 (patent no.175864), well after he had crossed the age of seventy, and sixty years after his first invention. He still does not have access to the canal water the rest of the village has been getting since 1972. He is a poor man now, in debt and struggling to make a living in Sade with his partially disabled son. People dont understand him. The village is full of newly rich farmers of the younger generation who think he is a madman. However, his dreams are alive and he is brimming with new ideas. He wants to work on a perpetual motion machine and says he will go straight to the President of India when he succeeds. His ambition is to own a factory and make machines which can be afforded by the poor. When asked what motivates him to continue being inventive in the face of hardship and betrayal, he said he was a follower of Saraswati, the goddess of knowledge; not everybody was blessed with brains - he was, and he wanted to use it.
This, then, is Marutrao Sarode. A man undeterred by misfortune, devoid of bitterness in the face of betrayal, positive in his outlook and unafraid to aim high. What if he does not succeed? That, according to him, is destiny. All that is in his hands, is to use his ability the best he can. |
Honey Bee Network Knowledge & Innovation Database (HBNKIND)