Tage Rita is an agricultural engineer from Ziro Valley and is India's first kiwi wine brewer. [1] In 2018, she was honored with the Women Transforming India Awards, organized by the United Nations and NITI Aayog.
Tage Rita Takhe was born in the Ziro Valley in Arunachal Pradesh. She belongs to the Apatani tribe. She studied and was trained as an agricultural engineer [2] from NERIST ( North Eastern Regional Institute of Science and Technology ), Nirjuli, Arunachal Pradesh.
In 2017, Rita invested in a boutique winery - Naara Aaba. In doing so, she also found the solution to a local problem. She would brew wine from Kiwi, a fruit that was found in abundance in the valley where she lived. She sourced the organic fruit from her orchard and the Kiwi Growers Cooperative Society in Arunachal Pradesh. The farming sector gained assured buyers. Her winemaking process follows traditional methods. It took her six years of research and planning to prepare the right procedure and the correct concoction. The winery has scaled its capacity since 2017 from 20,000 litres to 60,000 litres of wine production currently through 16 tanks.[ citation needed ] The first year of wine production alone supported 300 farmers and brought them back to the kiwi orchards, as they sold around 20 metric tons(20,000 kg) of kiwis to the winery. The process takes about four months from crushing the raw material to bottling. The wine tastes best between six and eight degrees Celsius. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
On International Women's Day 2022, she received the 2020 Nari Shakti Puraskar from President Ram Nath Kovind. The award is organised annually by the Ministry of Women and Child Development to recognise the women who create or inspire change. [10] The ceremony had been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic [11] and the ceremony included 72 women vaccinators who had excelled in their work. [10]
Ziro is a town in and the district headquarters of the Lower Subansiri district in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh. It is included the Tentative List for UNESCO's World Heritage Site for the Apatani cultural landscape. The part of the town which is the centre of economic activities and where the administrative offices are located is called as Hapoli or locally known by the Apatanis as "Hao-Polyang".
Saint Claret College, Ziro (SCCZ) is a Catholic undergraduate college established in the Himalayan foothills at Ziro, Arunachal Pradesh, India. Founded in 2003, SCCZ is served by Claretian Missionaries, a Roman Catholic Order founded by St. Anthony Mary Claret and that serves in 64 countries. Saint Claret College at Ziro is permanently affiliated to Rajiv Gandhi Central University, Itanagar. SCC is recognized by the University Grants Commission (UGC) and is accredited with "A" Grade by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC), Bangalore. SCCZ offers Bachelor of Arts, B. A., and B. Com, besides several certificate courses.
Apatani is a Tani language, a branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages, spoken in India.
The Nari Shakti Puraskar is an annual award given by the Ministry of Women and Child Development of the Government of India to individual women or to institutions that work towards the cause of women empowerment. It is the highest civilian honour for women in India, and is presented by the president of India on International Women's Day at Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. The award was instituted in 1999 under the title of Stree Shakti Puraskar, renamed and reorganised in 2015. It is awarded in six institutional and two individual categories, which carry a cash prize of 200,000 and 100,000 rupees, respectively.
The NITI Aayog serves as the apex public policy think tank of the Government of India, and the nodal agency tasked with catalyzing economic development, and fostering cooperative federalism and moving away from bargaining federalism through the involvement of State Governments of India in the economic policy-making process using a bottom-up approach. Its initiatives include "15-year road map", "7-year vision, strategy, and action plan", AMRUT, Digital India, Atal Innovation Mission, Medical Education Reform, agriculture reforms, Indices Measuring States’ Performance in Health, Education and Water Management, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Rationalization of Centrally Sponsored Schemes, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Skill Development, Task Forces on Agriculture and up of Poverty, and Transforming India Lecture Series.
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The Naara Aaba Wine Company is an Indian private company located in Hong Village, Ziro, in the state of Arunachal Pradesh. It is renowned for producing the country's first organic kiwi wine. The company was established in October 2017 by Tage Rita, an entrepreneur from Arunachal Pradesh, who named it after her late father-in-law.