Rourkela uses tech to stop waste of produce, boost farmers’ income

Rourkela in Odisha became the first and the only Indian city to win the prestigious global Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge in January this year for presenting their innovative idea in augmenting the income of women, traders and farmers with the help of technology.
In Rourkela, a small industrial city in Odisha, small-time vendors of fresh fruits and vegetables, mostly women, were facing the problem of wastage and low pricing due to the lack of storage facilities for their produce. The Municipal Corporation of Rourkela and the Rourkela Smart City Ltd decided to solve this problem by creating a solar powered cold storage for these vendors where they could store their produce and avoid wastage or distress selling.
But then came Covid-19 in the early months of 2020 and restrictions were put on the movement of people. It is at this time that the authorities at the Rourkela Municipal Corporation and the Rourkela Smart City Ltd decided to help these small vendors to keep their livelihood running. The authorities with the use of technology and women Self Help Groups (SHGs) in the city tied up with farmers and vendors to digitise their inventory and sell such produce online as well as through door-to-door marketing of these products with the help of women SHGs.
This idea had solved the problem of the farmers’ produce being wasted, helping generate more income for the small-time vendors and an income opportunity for the SHGs. Some 700 to 800 farmers have been benefited by this project so far.
It is this innovative idea that was sent as part of the post-Covid-19 economic recovery initiative that was sent as part of the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge last year. Through this idea, the city of Rourkela won the award out of the 639 cities from 99 countries that had sent their ideas to the global Mayor’s Challenge.
Rourkela is among the 15 cities that received this award, apart from cities like Amman (Jordan), Kumasi (Ghana), Bogota (Colombia), Kigali (Rwanda), Rotterdam (Netherlands), Phoenix (USA), Rochester (USA), among others. It is pertinent to mention here that from Asia, apart from Butuan in Philippines, Rourkela is the only city even from Asia to bag this prestigious award.
As part of the award, this project has also received a cash reward of one million US dollars to scale up this idea and implement it in a large scale. “Rourkela’s produce entrepreneurs face a longstanding lack of storage facilities, limiting the shelf life of their goods. By providing women entrepreneurs access to cold-storage units, Rourkela is reducing food waste and prolonging the window for produce to be sold. This offers multiple benefits, such as women’s economic empowerment, food security, and mobility in a single initiative. Since most vendors are women, women’s federations across the city will manage the storage units,” the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Mayors Challenge release read.
Dibya Jyoti Parida, the then Municipal Commissioner of Rourkela Municipal Corporation and the man behind the idea, told The Sunday Guardian that this project will run for the next three years as part of the post-Covid19 economic recovery project.
Parida has now been promoted to District Magistrate of Sambhalpur district in Odisha. “We created this idea as part of our initiative to help farmers, small vendors and the SHGs and implemented this in the city. We started with this idea because a lot of small vendors and famers come from the suburbs to sell their produce here. We wanted to turn the city into a trading hub for these marginalised sections and provide them with income. This idea was then sent to the Mayor’s Challenge and in the first round, 50 cities were chosen and we were one of them. We were then assigned a mentor who comes from the background of a very successful start-up of global repute who helps in materialising this idea into reality and analyse the result of this project. The award committee assessed us for eight months to see if this idea is actually generating income and profits for the poor and the marginalised and helping them. After the rigorous assessment of eight months, we were selected for the top 15 position for the award,” Parida said.
However, Parida also added that at the beginning of the project, they were faced with challenges of convincing the farmers and the vendors to keep their produce in the cold storage. “One of the challenges we faced in the early days was when farmers and vendors were not confident of keeping their produce which they could not sell in a day in our storage as they were apprehensive about the price and how they would get them back the next day. We convinced them and included the SHGs in the entire process to build their trust. We had also kept minimal charges for these marginal farmers and vendors where they could keep their produce as low as Rs 5,” Parida said.
This project would continue for the next three years. This project was also assessed by global universities like John Hopkins of the United States. Parida who cleared his UPSC examinations in 2015 was appointed to the Odisha cadre.