Boy designs cattle safety rope, gives villagers hope against theft
People at Kaithadove, a nondescript tribal village in northeast Bihar, are happy that they will no more have to lose sleep over fear of cattle theft. A Class 12 student from the village in Purnia district has given them hope that a safety rope designed by him will soon protect their cattleheads from pilferage.
Rajesh Hansda, 17, said, “I have seen my villagers suffer... Two buffalos and three cows belonging to my family were stolen in one night. Tears in the eyes of my father and uncle after the incident prompted me to design the rope,” said the student of ML Arya College, Kasba.
Hansda said the safety rope, which needed a 12 volt battery to operate, had an insulated copper or aluminum wire, a relay (electrically operated switch) and a diode (a semiconductor device with two terminals allowing the flow of current in one direction only) fitted in it. “The circuit is linked to an alarm. As soon as the wire, used for tying a cattlehead, is cut or broken, it sets the alarm bell ringing,” Hansda said.
“The device would not have taken shape had my high school teacher Santosh Kumar not guided me,” he added.
“The model was appreciated at the 5th National Level Exhibition and Project Competition 2015, organised under the Innovation in Science Pursuit for Inspired Research (INSPIRE) award scheme by the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology at IITDelhi in December 2015,” he said.