Unsung Heroes: Abdul Nadakattin, a grassroots innovator, who is changing farmers’ lives

Eventually, this led him to develop his first innovation — ‘water alarm’.

Nadakattin made the device by tying a thin rope to the end of the alarm’s key in such a way that when the key unwound itself, the string got wound. He then tied the string to a bottle filled with water, and when the key was completely unwound, the bottle would tilt and the water would fall on his face.

Agriculture in his region faced the risk of unpredictable rain along with scarce groundwater reserves. Like other farmers, he too faced this problem and this led him to search for an alternative.

Nadakattin decided to practice horticulture and planted mango, sapota, and ber with chilli as an intercrop on 16 acres of the 60 acres of land he had inherited from his father. He also got monetary help from his father.

He said sapota and ber were planted alternatively in between mango rows. However, owing to the lack of sufficient water the idea failed to take off and the plants suffered. With no other option left he removed the remaining undersized plants.

However, his innovative spirit led to the search for another alternative in the same field.

He decided to cultivate tamarind after observing that in an orchard, which was left uncared for a long period, the tamarind plants were standing green and had borne fruits as well. Other plants in the orchard had perished.

With much difficulty, he planted 1,600 tamarind plants in pits in rows with a spacing of 20 ft. With proper care, all his plants survived and continued to grow despite financial and other constraints for the following three years. In 1990, inspired by the success he planted 1,100 more plants on ten acres of land.

Many names

As suicides and suicidal thoughts among farmers are a growing concern across the farming scene in India, Nadakattin too was not spared from the crisis.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Nadakattin, who is also a recipient of the Padma Awardee, “With financial distress and low yields, I contemplated suicide. However, it was Dr S A Patil, the former vice chancellor of Dharwad University, who helped me during those difficult times”.

“He knew I was good at innovation and research of farming-related machinery and equipment. He showed me the path to market innovation and that is what led me to who I am today. He is my Godfather,” he added.

Because of his innovations related to tamarind, people started calling him “hunase huccha” or tamarind maniac in Kannada.

It started with his success in growing tamarind with scarce but alkaline water and further graduated with experiments like the technique for harvesting tamarind from the tree and also the highly accepted machine to separate its seeds. This inspired him to develop a machine for slicing tamarind.

After his successful stint with tamarind, he came up with innovations to address agriculture operations like deep ploughing, sowing of seeds, and also a fuel-efficient water heating boiler.

Supported by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, Nadakattin was conferred with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2015 during NIF’s 8th National Grassroots Innovation and Outstanding Traditional Knowledge Awards by the then President Pranab Mukherjee.

True to his grassroots spirit and as a mark of respect for the award, he chose to walk barefoot and came to be known as the country’s “barefoot scientist”.