Ergonomic evaluation during wheat cleaning through hanging type grain cleaner (HTGC)

Farm women play a prominent role in rural households. Their role lies from managerial work to labour work. They are overburdened and extent of their role differs from household to household and with region. But in all they provide crucial labour in farm operations. They are generally assigned non-mechanized operations in home, agriculture and animal husbandry which involve a lot of monotonous repetitive work involving lots of unnoticed drudgery during the operations. Thus a study was done in Shahdol district of Madhya Pradesh to minimize the drudgery of farm women involved in wheat cleaning. Hanging type grain cleaner (HTGC) was introduced and tested on farm women. Reduction of women drudgery with the use of HTGC was assessed in the term of energy expenditure and by calculating ergonomic cost. The results indicated that the HTGC cleaned 225.13 kg/h wheat as compared to local sieve 17.90 kg/h with saving in 84.20 per cent cardiac cost.