Pune-based Vidhya Parshuramkar, a 24-year-old food technologist and agri-entrepreneur whose start-up initiative Millets Now has created and distributes Nutri Dabbas, pearl millet and Vitamin C-rich meal packs, to lakhs of school children in rural India, was on Friday awarded the fourth Rohini Nayyar Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Rural Development at the India International Centre in New Delhi.
Ms. Parshuramkar is the first woman and youngest person to win the Rohini Nayyar Prize, given out by the Rohini Nayyar Foundation, to celebrate the pioneering economist’s work in India’s public policy sphere. Nayyar is credited with foundational work that led to the development of multi-dimensional indices for measuring poverty, and was one of the key architects of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) jobs scheme.
The Rohini Nayyar Prize involves a trophy, a cash prize of ₹10 lakh, and a citation, which was given to Ms. Parshuramkar on Friday by Professor S. Mahendra Dev, Chairperson of the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister, who recounted Nayyar’s contribution to public policy before handing out the award, and spoke of their founding of the Institute of Human Development (IHD).
