SRINAGAR, INDIAN-ADMINISTERED KASHMIR – His invention is expected to revive walnut industry in Kashmir. It will replace the traditional, manual process of hand picking and cracking walnuts -- a tedious task infamous for its low output.
But more than that, Mashtaq Ahmad Dar, a young man from a poor family, has become a role model for the youth of his village – a place teeming with new inventions and burgeoning inventors.
Mechanized Walnut Processing Launches Young Inventor’s Career
Kashmir is the only producer of walnuts in India. Dar’s invention -- the mechanized Walnut Cracker – will revolutionize Kashmir’s walnut industry by increasing efficiency. His device can crack and extract as many as 300 walnuts per minute.
“One day, while breaking walnuts manually the idea of devising walnut cracker struck me. Cracking walnuts manually is a plodding and tedious job,” Dar says.
At 28, Dar is also the inventor of a portable climber that is used to climb trees without having to lug around a ladder. He says he in the midst of developing a new machine for cracking almonds too.
Born to a poor family in Kreeri village in Kashmir’s southern Anantnag district, Dar was studying in secondary school when his father died. Financial constraints at home forced him to leave school and join his brother in the family occupation – walnuts.
Everyday for years, Dar climbed trees to pick walnuts. He would break shells by hand to bring out the fruit from each individual nut. Dar says developing a machine to mechanize the process would relieve people, like him, from the drudgery of doing it manually.
“Initially, I wasn’t able to make the machine. With continuous efforts, I succeeded after six months of a hectic make-and-break process,” he says. In April, he debuted the long-awaited device that processes dry walnuts of various sizes, shapes and hardness and cracks them without damaging the fruit inside.
Dar’s machine is a complex series of major components that include a hopper made of plywood, twin rollers that grip and break walnut shells, a support motor, a pulley system, a slide, and a series of electrical circuits that coordinate each walnut’s trip through the device. As the roller cracks the walnut, nuts are channeled down the angled flap and into a gunnysack positioned at the end of the chute. A single person can operate the machine.
An Inventor is Discovered, Inspires Others
Dar, who describes himself as a reclusive person, was presenting the idea for his walnut machine at a local workshop in Ahmedabad last year when Professor G.M. Bhat, director of the University Science Instrumentation Center, USIC, and the advisor for Entrepreneurial development at the University of Kashmir, approached him and showed some interest in his idea.
“We met him in a workshop in Ahmedabad and found his idea workable. We offered him workshop facility at [the] university campus,” Bhat says of first meeting Dar. Bhat has since helped Dar secure funding from the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network, GIAN, and the National Innovation Foundation.
“This machine enhances efficiency and increase[s] throughput,” Bhat says. “Such a walnut cracker isn’t available even in China where [the] walnut industry flourishes.”
Dar has become a big name in Kashmir over the course of the last year. In the last several months, he has received offers from six countries including China, the United States, Greece, Japan, Austria and Canada for marketing his innovations. But to date he has not accepted any of the offers. “Let the machine first hit [the] Indian market, then I will think about [the] foreign market,” Dar says.
In the one year after Dar was recognized for his walnut processor, his tiny village of Kreeri is buzzing with new inventors. Bhat too says that Kreeri is turning into innovator’s hub where more and more young people are following in Dar’s footsteps. “This village has lot of talent and needs to be nourished,” Bhat says.
Dar’s success has inspired many local young people. “Dar has given us a hope that if one works hard and with determination, he can, not only be accepted but honored as well,” says Ghulam Hassan, a young inventor who says he is working on a book about traditional tribal herbal practices.
Like Dar, Hassan hails from the same poor village and carried out all of the research for his new book on his own. His book contains more than 250 traditional medical practices, cures and techniques.
Peerzada Ghulam Ahmad, a village elder, says Dar has made them proud. “Seeing his success, the other youth in village are also working on various innovations, which is encouraging,” he says.
In fact, several villagers from Kreeri, who have no formal or technical education, are following Dar’s lead and creating inventions of their own. Shafeeq Shahzaaz, 30, a resident of Kreeri, is working on a paddy cutter for the rice fields. Shahzaaz says his invention is “70 percent” complete. “The idea of making this machine struck me during crop harvesting season, two years back, [because] laborers become [more expensive] and unavailable.” His idea has already been approved by GIAN.
Bashir Ahmad Wani, from the same village, recently invented a gas press to help with the frequent power outages here.
And Tabassum Jan, a resident in the same district invented an herbal remedy to increase memory power. She won the prestigious Sristi Samaan Award from NIF and is the only female inventor currently working with GIAN.
“My grandmother [was] illiterate but had great knowledge of these herbs,” Jan says of the foundations of her invention. “She used to offer herbal cures to people of [the] entire village who were suffering from various ailments,” says Jan, who was forced to quit her studies in the 10th grade due to financial constraints.
For Dar, who says he is so pleased to have the respect of his villagers, many new inventions are on his horizon. He says he is putting the final touches on a new device designed to restrict nicotine inhalation for smokers, a manual electricity generator, and a seed distribution machine.
