DST to adopt village clusters to make self sustainable:Vardhan

Union minister Harsh Vardhan today launched a project under which clusters of villages in Uttarakhand will be adopted to make them self-sustainable through scientific methods.
The Department of Science and Technology (DST) will adopt four clusters at Gaindikhata, Bazeera, Bhigun (in Garhwal) and Kausani (in Kumaon).
The scheme - Pt Deen Dayal Upadhayay Vigyan Gram Sankul Pariyojana - will see interventions in the areas of processing and value addition for products like milk, honey, mushroom, herbal tea, forest produce, horticulture and local crops, medicinal and aromatic plants in the selected clusters.
Under the scheme, these village clusters would be helped in post-harvest processing of kiwi, strawberry, cherry, tulsi, ginger through solar drying technology.

Stringent product and process control interventions for energy and water conservation would also be ensured through this project, Vardhan said.
The clusters were selected after a series of discussions by the officials of the DST, the Uttarakhand State Council of Science and Technology and stakeholders like the Gramodaya Network, Surabhi Foundation and Uttarakhand Utthan Parishad.

At an another event, Vardhan also launched a two-day bio-innovation fair.
The government is focused on making India a global hub for innovation and Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council (BIRAC), a PSU under the Department of Biotechnology, is playing a crucial role in shaping the biotech innovation ecosystem of the country, he said.

Thw two-day biotechnology conclave is a platform for the innovators to showcase what they are working on.
"This fair also gives us the opportunity to showcase the potential for scale-up of these innovations to stakeholders and decision-makers," DBT secretary K Vijay Raghavan said.