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Cuttack:20/7/24: Padma Shri awardee Kamala Pujari passed away in the wee hours of Saturday at the age of 73.
She was shifted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of SCB Medical College and Hospital from a Jeypore-based hospital two days back after her condition deteriorated. She died because of cardiac arrest in the wee hours of Saturday while undergoing treatment at SCB, sources said.
A team of four doctors from the Medicine Department, Nephrology Department, and Pulmonology Department was formed to treat Pujari. The team led by Medicine department professor Jayant Panda was looking after Pujari.
Hailing from Koraput, Pujari was known for promoting organic farming and preserving traditional paddy seeds. She has received several awards for her contributions, including the Padma Shri.
Interested in traditional farming, she learned the basic techniques of preserving paddy from MS Swaminathan Research Foundation at Jeypore and has contributed a lot in the field of organic farming. She was awarded India’s fourth highest civilian, the Padma Shri in the year 2019 by President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind.
Biography
Born to a poor tribal family, Pujari held a fascination for traditional paddy varieties. She had been a leader in the participatory research program started by the M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation in Koraput in 1994, which led to the breeding of the high-yielding and high-quality rice variety, ‘Kalajeera’. She has also preserved rare varieties of paddy like ‘Tili’, ‘Machakanta’, ‘Phula’, and ‘Ghnatia’.
Pujari also motivated hundreds of tribal women in her locality to shun chemical fertilizers in farming. Due to her efforts, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) declared Koraput a globally important agriculture heritage site (GIAHS) in 2012.
Koraput was also selected by the UN for the Equator Initiative Award, which was presented to Pujari during the Earth Summit held at Johannesburg in South Africa in 2002.
