Gave precious HMT rice to the country, today his generation is in a bad state! Who will come forward to help the Dalit farmer family of Maharashtra?

Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade’s grandson Deepak is living with his family in great difficulty. His one-year-old daughter Ruhani is suffering from a serious disease called Hypothermia, due to which her body temperature drops much below normal.

Geetha Sunil Pillai

Chandrapur, Maharashtra – A Dalit farmer who gave India unique rice varieties, who developed the popular high-yielding ‘HMT’ rice, his family is facing government neglect and financial crisis. This is the story of the family of late Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, a resident of Nanded village in Chandrapur district of Maharashtra, whose grandson Deepak Khobragade’s daughter Ruhani is suffering from a serious disease.

In 2010, Forbes magazine included Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade among the seven most influential entrepreneurs of India, but does respect alone feed a family? Grandfather passed away in 2018 due to lack of treatment.

After him, it has become difficult for his family and grandson, who are still living in poverty, to get their little daughter treated and the helpless father had to give up and appeal to the government and society for help through social media, citing his grandfather – “Late Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade, the inventor of HMT rice and Dalit farmer, was my grandfather. He left this world due to lack of treatment. I appeal to you with folded hands to please help according to your capacity. We need ?5 lakh for the treatment of daughter Ruhani. A little help from you can save her life.”

Deepak Khobragade’s daughter Ruhani is suffering from a serious illness for which the family needs help for treatment.

The generation of the father of HMT rice is in financial crisis

In 1983, Dadaji Ramaji Khobragade (1939 – 3 June 2018) saw a unique plant in the ‘Patel 3’ variety of rice in his field, which was different from other plants. He experimented on it and by 1990 named it ‘HMT’.

There is a story behind the name HMT too – When Ramaji reached the agricultural market with his cousin Bhimrao Shinde to sell 90 quintals of rice, the traders were curious about this rice that looked different and asked him its name. In those days, there was a huge craze for ‘HMT’ watches, so on asking the name, Bhimrao said ‘HMT’ and that was the name of the rice developed by Dadaji Ramaji. Customers liked the rice very much and in its time ‘HMT-Sona’ rice started selling at twice the price of other varieties.

The variety proved to be high-yielding, but the government and agricultural universities were not interested in adopting his achievement.

Dadaji Ramaji’s name hit the headlines when he accused the Panjabrao Krishi Vidyapeeth (PKV) of taking credit for the rice variety he had developed.

It so happened that in 1994, a PKV official visited Khobragade’s farm and returned with five kg of HMT seeds ‘for experimentation’, for which he signed a receipt. In 1998, PKV released PKV-HMT rice. It claimed to have “purified” the earlier variety – but it did not publicly acknowledge that it had obtained the seeds from the original farmer-breeder, Khobragade himself.

Khobragade and her rice breeding work received public recognition thanks to an article published in The Hindu in 2004. R.H. Khobragade, one of the world’s leading rice scientists and a contributor to preserving rice diversity, was accused of misusing the PKV variety. The first Richaria Samman award, instituted in memory of Richaria, was given to Khobragade for developing HMT and several other rice varieties.

In 2010, Forbes magazine named him among the seven most influential entrepreneurs in India. The Maharashtra government also gave him awards like ‘Krishi Bhushan’ and ‘Krishi Ratna’. However, despite receiving honors, he struggled with financial crisis throughout his life and died in 2018 due to lack of treatment after suffering from paralysis.

Deepak Khobragade is living in great difficulty with his family. His one-year-old daughter Ruhani is suffering from a serious disease called Hypothermia, due to which her body temperature goes well below normal.

Deepak says, “Ruhani’s treatment has been going on for the last one year and so far about Rs 3.5 lakh has been spent. This money was borrowed from relatives and friends. But now we are completely in debt. Daily physiotherapy is costing ? 1000 per day, which is no longer possible to afford. Ruhani is also undergoing brain-related treatment in Nagpur.” Deepak, who has done BSc in automobile and has worked in big companies, had to leave his job due to his daughter’s illness. His wife Poonam is an MA pass, and is temporarily staying with her husband in Chandrapur for Ruhani’s treatment.

Deepak’s elder brother Manish is a post graduate in agriculture, middle brother Vijay is a graduate in automobile. Both do private jobs. Her father Mitrajit Khobragade, who is a farmer, says, “Earlier we had 3 acres of land, but for my treatment Baba had to mortgage 1.5 acres. We have not been able to get that land back till date. Later my father-in-law bought 1.5 acres of land to secure his daughter’s future, which we still have.” The family is barely making a living by growing rice in the Kharif season on this land. Talking about the fraud done with his father, Mitrajit says that in 2005, the National

Courtesy : Hindi News