Anil Kumar Rajvanshi

Anil Kumar Rajvanshi is director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Phaltan, Maharashtra, where for more than three decades he has developed technology for rural life. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of science and engineering, from Maharashtra ^[1].

Coming home to rural India

Rajvanshi was born on 1 September 1950 and grew up in Lucknow ^[2]. After bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from IIT Kanpur, he went to the University of Florida in 1975, earned his PhD in 1979 and taught there for two and a half years ^[2]. In 1981 he returned to India to use his training for rural development ^[2].

Many firsts at NARI

His work has covered cooking and lighting with renewable energy, power from crop waste, fuel from farm produce, electric cycle rickshaws and water purification ^[2]. In the early 1990s his group ran one of the world’s largest programmes to make ethanol from sweet sorghum, and later pioneered ethanol as a cooking and lighting fuel for villages and a gasifier for loose biomass ^[2]. NARI also developed the first non-spiny hybrid safflower and a low-cost solar water purifier that needs no electricity ^[2]. In 1996 the institute wrote a national policy proposal for energy self-sufficient talukas ^[2].

He has more than 250 publications, seven patents and five books ^[2]. In 1998 he became the second Indian inducted into the Solar Hall of Fame in the United States, and he received the Jamnalal Bajaj Award in 2001 ^[2].