message to techfest organizers at teri and other colleges :

There is a dire need to bridge the widening distance between the opportunities available for creative communities and individuals in formal and informal sector. While individual innovators in every sector are disadvantaged their handicaps become several times multiplied when language, remoteness and illiteracy so characteristic of much of the informal sector, further impede the communication between two sectors.

When social tensions and in some cases instances of s violence are tearing the margins of the country apart, i really think it as a very desirable gesture on the part of the students at TERI ( and other such campuses) to engage with innovators in informal sector. i have no doubt that they will not make it just a one time engagement. we need several concrete steps to be taken up by young technology students:

a) benchmark the inertia in particular in technological activities of workers in different livelihoods, be it cobbler, stone breaker, luggage carrier in hills, so tea leaf plucker, or paddy transplanter or total lack of value addition in forest produce collected by tribals for centuries as just a labourer, etc.,

b) identify time bound ways of addressing these challenges, through collaborative learning, blending formal and informal science and technology,

c) mobilise small risk capital from alumni and high net-worth individuals to create social venture fund at each campus to invest in the socially useful ideas of students and also of the informal sector innovators

d) extend testing and calibration facilities to innovators without cost if need be or at extremely low cost so that advantage of state of art laboratories and workshops becomes available to informal sector

e) each student should develop at least one open source multi media and/or multi language lesson in any subject of any class for school children

f) reinforce the spirit of sharing and upload the assignments projects and other content on techpedia.in or other such platforms to make these open source after filing patents if the need be

I am sure there are many other initiatives that you will all take. Honey Bee network will be most happy to hear about your achievements and share them widely

keep it up

god bless you all

Anil K Gupta