The 20th Meeting of Research Advisory Committee (RAC) of ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture was held during 28-29 October, 2020 on virtual mode. Dr. V. N. Sharda, Ex-Member, ASRB, New Delhi chaired the meeting. Besides the RAC Members, five Technical Coordinators and 13 Unit Coordinators under AICRP on Home Science and 15 Scientists of ICAR-CIWA participated in the meeting. The meeting started with the briefing of mandatory Covid Advisory Guidelines by Dr. S.K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA. He offered a warm welcome to the Chairperson, Members of RAC and other participants to the meeting, and also introduced the two recently nominated non-official members to the House. He expressed his gratitude to the Chairperson and Members of RAC for their valuable inputs in reshaping the research proposals submitted by the Scientists. He reiterated that the technologies assessed/ refined should be validated on pan India level, and it should outreach the line departments of state governments.

Dr. V. N. Sharda, Chairperson of RAC, commended the Institute for its past achievements, as the only Institute which caters to the needs and aspirations of the farmwomen in the country. He advised the Scientists to put their maximum efforts in a holistic and integrated approach on addressing the gender issues from the national perspective, and achieve the national priorities and goals. CIWA should take lead in generating the gender database for the whole country and this Institute should be the repository of gender database.

Dr. P. S. Pandey, ADG (EP&HS) stressed that there should be complete synchronization between CIWA and AICRP projects to get the national scenario. He also highlighted the emphasis given by Hon’ble Prime Minster on drudgery reduction of farm women, and accordingly research and extension works on drudgery reduction of farmwomen in dairy, poultry, fisheries and post harvest sector should be given priority.

RAC member, Dr. S. Prabhu Kumar suggested that emphasis should be on role of women in empowering social engineering through group dynamics, and research projects on role of women in FPOs which are increasing in number in recent years. He also suggested utilizing the research outcome of completed projects in future projects. Dr. Kalpana Sastry suggested that in the initial stages of project formulation itself, mapping of the technologies to be taken from different institutions should be done, in case of technology assessment and refinement oriented projects. She also suggested that the completion report of projects should be brought out immediately. She also suggested to see for IPR issues in IT and commercialization related policies.

Dr. Mahalakshmi Reddy suggested that the findings on outcome of the projects studied should be taken to the knowledge of their original inventers so as to facilitate further refinement. She also opined that it should be made mandatory that at least two research publications should come out from each project. Dr. P. K. Dehuri suggested developing the incubation centre at ICAR-CIWA in the model of ICAR-IIMR, Hyderabad. Drudgery reduction of women involved in livestock sector shall also be given adequate focus. He recommended that the package of practices for adopted villages giving emphasis on NRM may be developed. Dr. P. C. Lenka suggested that focus should be on secondary agriculture and post harvest technologies for entrepreneurship development of farmwomen. Smt. Sushila Bishnoi expressed that the awareness level of farmwomen on the women friendly technologies is very low, and efforts should be taken to increase the same. Adequate awareness on women friendly farm tools and machineries and its availability may be ensured.

The Action Taken Report (ATR) on the recommendations of 19th RAC Meeting was presented by Dr. J. Charles Jeeva, Member-Secretary, RAC. Dr. S.K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA presented the salient achievements in the past and the future perspectives of ICAR-CIWA. The Chairman appreciated the comprehensive presentation. The salient achievements under each of the completed (Institute and externally funded) projects, AICRP on Home Science and AICRP on Ergonomics and Safety in Agriculture (ESA) were also presented. After deliberation on the research achievements of previous and ongoing projects, and future perspective of ICAR-CIWA, the Committee made various recommendations. In his concluding remarks, Dr. S.K. Srivastava, Director, ICAR-CIWA expressed his sincere gratitude to the RAC Chairman and Members for showing their concern for the Institute and offering constructive suggestions for strengthening the research and extension activities of the Institute. The Meeting ended with a formal vote of thanks by Dr. J. Charles Jeeva, Member-Secretary, RAC.