Odisha farmer makes power tiller from scrapped scooter

Angul, May 23: An Angul man has designed a power tiller from a scrapped scooter. The device that he developed to cultivate his own farm land is now a need for the farmers far away. The agro friendly man has been identified as Santosh Kumar Dehury who is a native of Ranigoda village beside Angul Railway station. Santosh has developed a scrapped scooter into an automated power tiller which has the capacity to plough 1.5 acres of land within 1.5 hours with 3.5 litre of petrol. Besides, the device can be used as a rotavator and a weeder after fitting two additional tools to it. Santosh, who is an electronics technician by profession, was very fond of cultivation from his early childhood. He was accompanying his father to go to the farmland with the carts during his studies. However, he was shocked to see the bullocks while pulling the plough painfully. Since then, he was in search of an alternative. Looking the tractors on the paddy field he requested to bring such one and free the bullocks those tied to the pegs but in-vain, due to poverty. Meanwhile, Santosh prepared a blueprint to design no cost or low cost agro-tools for the small and marginal farmers in January 21. Accordingly, he bought a scrapped scooter for Rs.650 and some iron angles from a local scrapper. As his electronics unit is closed amid the lockdown, he translated his long cherished dream to reality and made the power tiller functional on the eve of Akshya Tritiya. He cultivated about 7 acres of his land with the new device and also examined its weeding capacity at the nearby forest. Similarly, he demonstrated the rotavator function at the water logged area near the village pond that astonished the traditional farmers of the village. The cost of production of the device is approximately 6.5 thousands, which a small sharecropper can afford from his easy harvest, said Santosh. In the mean time, he has got order of 29 units of his device, for which he has arranged as many as 13 useless scooter engines so far. Moreover, Santosh has continued his tireless effort to configure automated paddy seeding and sowing machine after the delivery of the power tillers.