IRTC’s year long celebration to commemorate the Diamond Jubilee year of Kerala Sashtra Shithya Parishad had a scintillating beginning. P. Muraleedhdaran, Registrar, IRTC began the celebration by hosting the flag. A.M. Balakrishnan, Secretary, PIU inaugurated the tree seedling planting and a total of sixty trees were planted in the wayside to mark the sixtieth year of the IRTC’s founding organisation. Dr. P.N. Damodaran delivered the keynote address. IRTC- Parishad Unit Secretary Vinayak Vijayan welcomed the gathering. Saji Jacob, A.N. Sivadas and V.V. Bhageerathi led the events.

A variety of activities related to the daily life of the various communities within the unit will be conducted throughout the year, including green housing, job training and children’s library activities for students.

In continuation, the IRTC Parishad Unit organised a meeting which was held at 4 pm. Dr. R.V.G. Menon inaugurated the session. Dr. P.K. Raveendran, Director of Research , IRTC recollected the journey of Parishad and Selvaraj delivered a talk on the history of IRTC and Parishad. The event was graced with the cultural programmes led by Jyothi.

The Government of Kerala through K-DISC and five academic institutions is implementing the ‘Mazhavillu’ project to instill scientific temper and a different pedagogy for science teaching for the students in Kerala.

A week-long workshop conducted for Mazhavillu animators held at IRTC ended on 1 August 2021. The closing ceremony was inaugurated by M.B. Rajesh, Hon. Speaker of Kerala.

P.V. Unnikrishnan, Member Secretary, K-DISC and Dr. C.P. Narayanan, Chairperson of the project and former Member of Parliament delivered the keynote address. Dr. C. Ramakrishnan, Core Committee Member, Rainbow project presided over the function.

Dr. J. Sundaresan Pillai, Director, IRTC; Vineesh V.T., Research Officer, SCERT; Dr. T.V. Sajeev, Academic Coordinator, Mazhavillu, felicitated over the function. The pilot project is currently run in five Centres in Kerala. IRTC is one of the Centres.

IRTC celebrated World Water Week with two-days webinar on this year’s theme “Building Resilience Faster”. Dr. Manoj P. Samuel, Executive Director, CWRDM inaugurated the webinar on 26 August with a session on Climate Change and Water Management- Issues and Strategies” followed by Dr. P. Harinarayanan, Principal Scientist, KSCSTE on Enactments for Wetland Conservation.

On the next day of the webinar, Dr. Ajit Haridas, Dr. Suryanarayanan and Dr. Salom Gnana Thanga V. led the sessions on Laws on Water Pollution, Valuing Water with Special Reference to Ground Water and Anti-microbial Resistance in Water: An Emerging Threat respectively.

Prof. P.K. Raveendran, Director of Research, IRTC moderated the webinar.

Prof. (Dr.) J. Sundaresan Pillai assumes the reins as the new Director of IRTC. Prior to this he has held several positions including Head, Research and Business Development Division; Head, Climate Change Informatics; Coordinator, Academy of Scientific and Innovative Res. (AcSIR); Nodal officer- Ecology, Environment, Earth & Ocean Science & Water(E3OW), CSIR-NISCAIR. He has decades of experience in the field of science research and has retired from CSIR as Senior Principal Scientist. He has authored three books and to his credit eight edited books, 11 book chapters and more than 80 published works. He has also worked as the Editor of Indian Journal of Geo-Marine Science.

IRTC Parishad Production Centre is hosting Samata Fest 202- a month’s long exhibition at IRTC Jubilee Campus, Mundur. Dr. T.M. Thomas Issac inaugurated the fest on August 2, 2021.

A wide variety of plantlings, pottery products, bamboo products, rice, vegetable seeds, garden materials, and homecare products of Samata are kept for sale. The exhibition lasts till August 31.

IRTC has set up a new Environment Division which envisions to protect vulnerable ecosystems and enhance the sustainability of the development process as its major objectives.

A webinar was conducted on ‘Covid-19 and Environment’ in connection with the inauguration of the division. Dr. B. Ekbal Inaugurated the division and led the inaugural session. Two invited lectures were delivered by Dr. C.T. Aravindakumar and Dr. P.S. Easa on “Air Pollution and Covid-19” and “Relevance of Environmental Science in Pandemic Days” respectively. The whole event was held via google meet on August 3, 2021. Prof. P.K. Raveendran moderated the webinar.

IRTC is looking forward to widen its horizon to meet the current and upcoming challenges in the field of environment. IRTC already has a well-functioning Natural Resources Management Division- Centre of Geoinformatics under it, Solid Waste Management Division and Energy Division that deals with the various aspects related to environment science. The new division will augment the current interventions.

Former Minister Dr. T.M. Thomas Issac visited IRTC. During his three days visit from July 31 to Aug 2, he interacted with the scientists, researchers and staff at IRTC. Dr. Issac expressed his wishes for the ongoing projects and shared his insights for future goals.

He released the progress report of the various waste management activities carried out by the Harithakarmasena across different local bodies in Kerala prepared by IRTC Haritha Sahaya Sthapanam (a body to provide technical help for waste management initiatives for the local bodies). He interacted with various stakeholders associated with the activities.

He inaugurated the Samata Fest 2021 organised by IRTC- Parishad Production Centre in a programme held at Jubliee Campus of IRTC.

The State level inauguration of “Mazhavillu-Teach for Kerala” project was led by Pinarayi Vijayan, Chief Minister of Kerala. The project is implemented by K-DISC as a sequel to its own project “Manchadi”. “The project is capable enough to bring in a social intervention in the field of education. It will also enhance the analytical, critical and investigative skills among students”, the CM said inaugurating the function. K-DISC currently runs the pilot project at five centres in Kerala including Integrated Rural Technology Centre. The other four include Brennen college (Kannur), Maharajas College (Ernakulam), KFRI (Thrissur) and Government Arts College (Thiruvananthapuram. The project aims to instil an understanding of science subjects through practical based learning sessions. The district- wise inauguration was done by K. Binumol, Palakkad District Panchayat President inaugurated held at IRTC campus on the same day.

Annual assessment cum training meeting of IRTC HSS coordinators were held at IRTC campus on April 8-9. Quarterly assessment of the performance of coordinators were made and training was provided to them. The performance of each local body, as well as further procedures to be done by them, were discussed in detail. IRTC is currently providing technical support for waste management for 60 panchayats, 3 municipalities and 1 corporation comprising a total of 64 local bodies. During last year IRTC had provided support for more than 120 local bodies in the state.

IRTC has taken a mixed approach considering the unique challenges of each local body to constitute a comprehensive waste management plan. Dividing each local body to clusters; meetings and awareness programmes are conducted on a regular basis. IRTC further paved the way for the formation and swift functioning of Harithakarmasena (the green army mostly constituting women who work at the grass-root level to collect and segregate waste from households) which has exponentially contributed in achieving the strategies for waste management goals of the local bodies.

NABARD Chief General Manager R. Balachandran visited IRTC office on 11 January 2021 and interacted with the CEOs of the KFW soil project PFAs. Dr. Sreekumar, Director, IRTC presided over the meeting and DDM Lalu P.N. Kutty delivered the agenda for discussion.

There was a detailed discussion on the utilisation of maintenance fund, indicators for assessing KfW project and the loan scheme contemplated by NABARD with banks. Most of the participants favoured entrusting full responsibility to VWCs in concurrence with the concerned PFAs to decide on the utilisation of maintenance fund since it has been operational since the last ten years based on NABARD guidelines.

CGM also said that NABARD will come up with a direction regarding the parameters related to climate change resilience to be monitored for KfW projects. The visit was part of the annual assessment of NABARD- IRTC projects, mainly KfW Soil Project. The purpose of the projects under the programme is to reduce vulnerability to climate change of small-scale farmers in selected watersheds through the stabilization, enhancement and sustainable use of soil and water resources. IRTC as Project Facilitating Agency of eight Watersheds in Palakkad.