The efforts of 27-year-old Lahari Bai, a member of the Bagai tribe and resident of the village of Silapadi in Dindori, Madhya Pradesh, to become the brand ambassador for millets and has been praised by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for her efforts. More than 150 different types of millet seeds have been preserved by her.
PM shared a Tweet, while responding to DD News Tweet
“Proud of Lahari Bai, who has shown remarkable enthusiasm towards Sree Ann. Her efforts will motivate many others”.
United Nations has declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets3
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About Lahari Bai
Lahari Bai is a native of Silapadi village and is a Baiga Tribal. She lives with her parents in a two room Indira Awas Yojana.
Her house is a Millet Bank
One room of the house in which she lives serves as a living room and kitchen, and the other is concerted into a Beej Bank, which is used for storing around 150 plus rare millets such as Kodo, Kutki, Sanwa, Madhya , Salar and Kaag crops.
These seeds are sown by Lahari Bai in a specific area of her farmland. After that, farmers in her village and the remaining 15-20 villages that make up the 54-village Baika Chak receive the multiplied seed varieties (villages native to the Baiga tribal population). It is given free by her.
It has been struggle for Lahari Bai , since she started preserving Millets. Farmers also give her a small portion of their harvest.
She recalls her experience,
“People ridiculed me and often drove me away, but I had only two missions, one to not marry and serve my parents for the rest of my life, and the second to conserve millet seeds and promote their farming. Now no one insults me anymore,”
Dindori district collector Vikas Mishra who nominated Lahari (who never went to school) for a coveted Rs 10 lakh sponsorship of a Jodhpur based ICAR had this thing to say;
“If she gets the scholarship, she will be seen guiding Ph.D. students,”
About Millets
The majority of the species that are commonly referred to as millets belong to the tribe Paniceae, but some millets also belong to various other taxa. Millets are a highly diverse group of small seeded grasses that are widely grown as cereal crops or grains for fodder and human food throughout the world.
Previously a mainstay in traditional Indian cuisine, millet has been slowly making a comeback in both India and other parts of the world.
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