Interviews
Invention revolutionizes traditional way of stripping cotton
02 Oct '09
3 min read
A tenth standard school dropout and who hails from the arid, but rich cotton producing region of Gujarat has invented a machine, which puts to an end the manual monotonous task of stripping the raw cotton ball from its shell after it is harvested, but, before it is sent for ginning.
Mansukh Patel who belongs to a poor farmer family invented the cotton stripper machine. In the manual process, some varieties of cotton balls need to be plucked from the shell and since it is a tedious and cumbersome procedure, mostly women and children engage in it.
To understand more about the machine, Fibre2fashion spoke exclusively to Mansukh Patel, who said that, “During one of my visits to my village I saw school going children and women manually cracking open the shell to extract the cotton ball”.
“This made me mull over developing a machine which would be able to replace the manual and tedious task of cracking the shell and it took me nearly four years to get the actual basics of the stripping machine correct”, he said.
He added with pride that, the machine is able to strip 1.5 tons of raw cotton balls from the shells in just one hour and it has also brought down the cost of cotton stripping from Rs 1 per kg to Rs 1 for 20 kg, which also helps farmers to generate extra incomes.
We also spoke to Mr Anil Gupta, a eminent professor at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and also the Vice-Chairman of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) who said, “This machine is useful in dry land cotton growing areas and 797 variety of cotton in particular”.
He explained, “Cotton which are grown in dry land area and where irrigation facilities are not properly available, stripping of cotton is a bit difficult, as the cotton ball fits tightly into the shell. This machine helps in breaking down the shell & is also helpful in cleaning the cotton in better way rather then, when done manually”.
“Hence cotton stripped through this machine gets a better price, when compared with the manual process of extracting the cotton ball and to help the women, who cannot afford to buy the machine, NIF, is willing to provide these machines on lease”, he said.
This will help them earn as well pay back the price of the machine and I also urge NGO's and the government to come forward and provide financial assistance to these women for buying the stripping machine”, he concluded by saying.
Mansukh Patel who belongs to a poor farmer family invented the cotton stripper machine. In the manual process, some varieties of cotton balls need to be plucked from the shell and since it is a tedious and cumbersome procedure, mostly women and children engage in it.
To understand more about the machine, Fibre2fashion spoke exclusively to Mansukh Patel, who said that, “During one of my visits to my village I saw school going children and women manually cracking open the shell to extract the cotton ball”.
“This made me mull over developing a machine which would be able to replace the manual and tedious task of cracking the shell and it took me nearly four years to get the actual basics of the stripping machine correct”, he said.
He added with pride that, the machine is able to strip 1.5 tons of raw cotton balls from the shells in just one hour and it has also brought down the cost of cotton stripping from Rs 1 per kg to Rs 1 for 20 kg, which also helps farmers to generate extra incomes.
We also spoke to Mr Anil Gupta, a eminent professor at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad and also the Vice-Chairman of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) who said, “This machine is useful in dry land cotton growing areas and 797 variety of cotton in particular”.
He explained, “Cotton which are grown in dry land area and where irrigation facilities are not properly available, stripping of cotton is a bit difficult, as the cotton ball fits tightly into the shell. This machine helps in breaking down the shell & is also helpful in cleaning the cotton in better way rather then, when done manually”.
“Hence cotton stripped through this machine gets a better price, when compared with the manual process of extracting the cotton ball and to help the women, who cannot afford to buy the machine, NIF, is willing to provide these machines on lease”, he said.
This will help them earn as well pay back the price of the machine and I also urge NGO's and the government to come forward and provide financial assistance to these women for buying the stripping machine”, he concluded by saying.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India
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