Dilemma of a hesitant or may be a pseudo-secularist! He believes that no religion has a monopoly on issuing passports to heaven. But he also believes that one can only practice rituals of the religion in which one is born. He recognises that peace may follow when one practices some of the rudimentary rituals. But argues,…
As a part of an ongoing research project on soil, plant, human health, a consortium has been formed with agricultural, animal scientists, medical doctors and other stake holders to pursue the socio-ecological linkages and developing a system biological approach to analyse and solve nutritional problems of our society. I will discuss it in detail in future…
Nicole Perlroth EVERYTHING VENTURED This post is part of an ambitious project at Forbes Magazine to crowd source the cover of our January issue with “Names You Need To Know in 2011. Click here to submit your ideas for names and ideas that have potential to shake things up in the coming year. The best…
Laying the foundation: Education for innovation Large scale reforms are currently being tried in the educational sector. Despite the current decade being a ‘decade of innovation’, nothing much seems to be happening to rethink the school curriculum to make it more conducive for promotion of creative and innovative minds. The awards recently announced by NIF under IGNITE…
IGNITE ’10: Unleashing the power of creative young Indian While editing Young Indian during 1919-1932, Gandhi addressed many problems of nation building. But, he obviously could not anticipate how creative young Indians could be in the independent India. National Innovation Foundation [NIF] organizes contests among children every year for new ideas, inventions and innovations with the help of…
GNITE 10 Awards Upto Class 8 Award Name Class School District State Title Summary I Aditya Parashar 7 Tagore Vidya Mandir Hoshangabad MP Viberator based overtake alarm, light sensitive TV remote; transport vehicle with rotatory luggage carrier and other ideas A microphone in the side view mirror to identify horn frequencies. When door window glass…
From Tianjin to cancun: failure of climate change conference but innovators can still help On Saturday, the host country China expressed disappointment with the attitude of the developed nations who seemed to be backtracking on the commitments made in Kyoto Protocol. Some estimates showed that global carbon dioxide emissions might surpass the targeted limit of 40…
Laitkynsew village is home of the living root bridges across the monsoon-fed river. The local Khasi and Jaintia people have managed to somehow train the secondary roots of trees to travel across the river and then embedded the same on the other side. Smit, Shillong which is known as the Khasi culture center and is…
Machine for Picking dryland cotton in standing crop: Nattubhai’s saga The story of Natthubhai, a thirty nine year old, passionate farmer pursuing his dream of developing a tractor drawn mobile cotton picking machine is a story of a decade long struggle. The work is still in progress. He made a model earlier, which did work…
Water, wisdom and wars: when hunger stalks, anger is not far behind When several parts of the world are facing flood, talking about drought may seem queer. But the fact is that millions of hectares and people have been affected by once in hundred years drought in china, and Vietnam, worst drought in two decades in…