22nd Research Advisory Committee Meeting organized at ICAR-CIWA

The 22nd Meeting of Research Advisory Committee (RAC) of ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture was held on 15-16 September, 2022. The meeting was chaired by Dr (Prof.) Madhura Swaminathan, Indian Statistical Unit, in which five RAC members besides scientists from ICAR-CIWA and AICRP on Women in Agriculture have participated. Dr Anil Kumar, Director, ICAR-CIWA welcomed the participants and expressed his gratitude to the dignitaries for agreeing to give direction to the research activities of the institute for farm women in Agriculture.

Dr Madhura Swaminathan, Chairperson of RAC, highlighted that ICAR-CIWA is a unique institution having potential to become a repository of knowledge relating to women in agriculture in India. She emphasized that social science needs to be strongly integrated while studying appropriate technologies for women in agriculture as the social dimensions are very important to understand adoption, acceptance and usefulness of various technologies. She urged the scientists that research projects and studies should be women-centric and focussed on specific gender dimensions following a strong methodology identifying a set of measurable outcomes. She stressed that ICAR-CIWA should take lead in generating gender database for whole of the country in order to bring the national and international visibility.

Dr. P. S. Pandey, ADG (EP&HS) advised the institute should focus gender disaggregated data and knowledge, technology testing and refinement, drudgery assessment and reduction, livelihood and nutrition, gender work participation, climate and gender, engendering agricultural research and extension and capacity building of stakeholders for empowering farm women. He emphasized that there should be complete synchronization between ICAR-CIWA and AICRP (WiA) in research and extension activities in the 13 centres of 12 states across the country. The RAC suggested to develop linkage with KVKs for technology assessment, refinement, demonstration, popularization and skill based capacity development of farm women. The focus need to be given on secondary agriculture, post harvest technologies, nutri sensitive agriculture with special emphasis on value addition for entrepreneurship development of farm women.

The Action Taken Report (ATR) on the recommendations of 21st RAC Meeting was presented by Dr. B. Sahoo, Member-Secretary, RAC. The salient achievements of the institute and ongoing activities of ICAR-CIWA were presented by Dr. A.K. Panda, In charge, PME Cell. The progress on various projects under 5 specific programmes were presented by respective programme leaders. The research activities and achievements of ongoing projects of AICRP centres of women in Agriculture along with progress on nutri-smart village programme was presented by Dr Lipi Das, Nodal, AICRP (WiA). The RAC appreciated the work being done by the institute and advised the scientists to establish strong linkages and partnership with other institutes for wider dissemination of women friendly technologies. In the concluding remarks, Dr. Anil Kumar, Director, ICAR-CIWA expressed his sincere gratitude to the RAC Chairperson and members for the constructive suggestions for strengthening the research and extension activities of the Institute. The Meeting ended with a formal vote of thanks by Dr. B. Sahoo, Member-Secretary, RAC.