The 21st Meeting of Research Advisory Committee (RAC) of ICAR-Central Institute for Women in Agriculture was held during 28-29 April, 2021 in virtual mode. Dr. V. N. Sharda, Ex-Member, ASRB, New Delhi chaired the meeting. Besides the RAC Members, 14 Scientists of ICAR-CIWA and 82 scientists under AICRP on Women in Agriculture 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, non-official members of RAC and scientists who participated in the meeting. He expressed his gratitude to the Chairperson and Members of RAC for their valuable inputs in reshaping the research proposals from project to programme mode. He urged the scientists to establish strong linkages and partnership with other institutes in pan India mode for wider dissemination of women friendly technologies at national and international level.

Dr. V. N. Sharda, Chairperson of RAC, commended the Institute for its past achievements being a unique and premier Institute in the field of women empowerment in Agriculture. He advised the Scientists to put their maximum efforts in a holistic and integrated approach in addressing the gender issues from the national perspective, evaluate the national schemes launched by Govt. of India and assess their impact on women empowerment and livelihood security. He stressed that ICAR-CIWA should take lead in generating the gender database for the whole country in order to bring the national visibility. He also emphasized on identifying the need based women friendly technologies for further testing, evaluation and validation in different agro ecological regions of the country and assessing impact of technologies and various schemes launched by Govt. of India for the benefit of farm women.

Dr. P. S. Pandey, ADG (EP&HS) advised the scientists to establish complete synchronization between ICAR-CIWA and AICRP (WIA) in research and extension activities through common mandate and programme in order to get the national scenario. The members of RAC suggested to develop linkage with KVKs for technology assessment, refinement, demonstration, popularization and skill based capacity development of farm women. The focus should be given on secondary agriculture, post harvest technologies, nutri sensitive agriculture with special emphasis on value addition for entrepreneurship development of farmwomen.

The Action Taken Report (ATR) on the recommendations of 20th RAC Meeting was presented by Dr. B. Sahoo, 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 modified new project proposals of ICAR-CIWA and AICRP(WIA) under programme mode were also presented. After discussion, deliberation and modus operandi of various research works along with 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. B. Sahoo, Member-Secretary, RAC.