the suggestion that Railways should raise 25 per cent fare to meet the cost of modernisation needs rethinking. People should ask whether the committee considered the role of a) reducing procurement cost, b) did it look at the dynamics of vendor selection in tenders above 1000 crores, to ensure that we allow new cost efective…
Rebuilding institutions of higher learning: expansion, inclusion and excellence In the recent Indian Science Congress, Prime Minister bemoaned the fact that China had overtaken India on various indicators of performance in higher education. It is ironic that while China is ruled by a single party and India is a democratic country, yet the institutions of…
Civilizational crosscurrents of learning across the borders Recent visit to China once again convinced me about the enormous potential that exists for changing the course of global development by synergising Indo-china cooperation for the larger social good. There are so many problems which both the societies are facing which can not be resolved without active…
Innovation support eco-system: what can state governments do Yesterday, in a meeting organised at Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, Chief Minister announced a state level fund to support innovations by farmers. ICAR, PPVFRA, Haryana Kisan Ayog, and several other institutions were involved in honouring farmer breeders of crops and horticultural varieties and innovative practices. Not surprisingly,…
Feeding two and half kg of grains to the birds standing under the sun: modern jurisprudence plays far more stress on punishment and we believe that it will act as a deterrence for future offenders.But many traditional communities followed a different logic. They believed perhaps that reforming an offender was more important than just giving a punishment. in the present case, standing barefoot under the sun in deserts…
Techpedia.in ( www.techpedia.in ): an update Techpedia, an initiative at SRISTI ( a NGO, sristi.org ) aims at putting the problems of micro, small and medium enterprises, informal sector, grassroots innovators and other social sectors on the agenda of the young technology students across the country. For over last sixty years, India has not utilized…
cine 2011/akg/iima Name email edu Experience ( years) hobbies colour u like most favorite song a favourite quote what you can not stand what you can not do without Benchmarking our understanding of innovation –ecosystem 1. what is an innovation, how do we define it? 2. is it necessary to be an innovator to be…
Sattvik: Food for thought, policy and action The action research on exploring market based mediation for generating opportunities for knowledge and resource rich but economically disadvantaged people has generated several new alternatives. We realized that women groups from over fifteen districts of Gujarat tried to commercialise their products and cooked traditional foods, they may not…
Social criticism as a trigger for innovation The democratic society can measure its success in decentralizing and opening up the decision making processes by the extent to which it invites and welcomes open social criticism. Unfortunately, the team of Anna Hazare or government or other institutions, everybody seems to believe, that entire truth is on their…
Promoting innovations, social inclusion and industrial relevance in technical education A review of over 100,000 projects done by 350,000 students from 500 institutions at techpedia.in, an imitative of SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) shows tremendous talent that our young technology students have in the country. By not tracking this talent and…