Tag : Grassroots

New Delhi (The Hawk): Shri C V Raju and Shri Moa Subong, grassroots innovators from Andhra Pradesh and Nagaland, respectively, are amongst the 106 Padma Shri awardees announced for the year 2023. While the awards recognized Shri C V Raju’s efforts of reviving the traditional art of making Etikoppaka toys by adoption of eco-friendly technologies, Shri Moa Subong will be awarded for S&T based innovative ways of creating Naga folk music. Both of them have been supported by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) - India, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, in various forms for incubation of their respective technologies. They have also received NIF’s Biennial National Grassroots Innovation and Outstanding Traditional Knowledge Award as their first major recognition of life for Herbal Toys: Shri C V Raju (2002) conferred by then Hon’ble President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam and Bamhum: an innovative wind musical instrument: Shri Moa Subong (2017) conferred by then Hon’ble President of India Shri Pranab Mukherjee. Shri Moa Subong and Shri C V Raju have been invited to be part of the 4th (2017) and 5th (2018) batches of the Innovation Scholar-In-Residence programme at Rashtrapati Bhavan, respectively. Shri C V Raju from Etikoppaka village, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh, is preserving the traditional method of making Etikoppaka toys, a heritage rooted in his village, by making vegetative dyes and developing technologies for increasing the shelf life of the dyes. He has developed a variety of contemporary toys for which the market continues to emerge in India and abroad. This traditional method of making wooden toys using non-toxic paints and natural dyes, an identity that defined ...