I don’t think anybody disagrees, that start-up movement has bypassed the rural regions. Not that entrepreneurial urge is low in rural areas, but the current start-up ecosystem is incapable of reaching the creative rural communities. Why would central and state policymakers be so diffident in reaching the rural, scattered, innovative entrepreneurs? There are several reasons…
How many pulse producing regions have small dal mills to enable in situ value addition? Just by splitting, sorting and cleaning and using the pulse grain skin for poultry or animal feed, one can in many cases double the farmers’ income. And yet, as I have reminded policymakers many times, we still don’t have a…
Communities of thought, practice, and forecasting future shape our individual aspirations and value system. If these communities spur the conversation about the future generation, and forge rituals for remembering their share in our current consumption, they foster a different kind of lifestyle and institutions than when we ignore such conversations. Similarly, when communities invoke in…
Shahid Bhagat Singh, whose birth anniversary nation celebrated recently, reminded us that it was easy to kill an individual, but not to kill an idea. Mahatma Gandhi was killed but his ideas endure. No idea remains valid for all times unless it assimilates evolving contradictions of social, cultural and environmental consciousness. When he gave a…
Empowering communities as well as designers through embedding autonomy is not enough. One must also have agency to use that autonomy for reciprocal and responsible designs for inclusive social development. Autonomy is the freedom to act. Agency is the willingness to use that freedom. Inclusive development implies technological, institutional and cultural solutions that are accessible…
Many parents are worried that children get highly stressed at young age because of various anxieties triggered by perhaps parental and/or social expectations. But they still don’t provide enough opportunities to their children to relax by fertilizing their imagination, wander to wonder about nature, social diversity and even more importantly, so many unmet social needs…
The regions with low population density, difficult terrain, poor telecom coverage and uncertain weather require different norms of development than the regions with contrasting conditions. This must be quite obvious to the planners and administrators. But students from iima who went to Uttrakhand as a part of shodhyatra course felt otherwise. They felt that several…
Global Innovation challenges-1: a call for creative connections with children, youth and women When any society learns to live with solvable problems by reinforcing inertia, indifference and also internalizing helplessness, then imagination gets stifled first. Once imagination gets constrained, innovations are unlikely to follow. UNICEF and SRISTI have joined hands to announce a global challenge…
Seeking solutions to problems faced by the women, children and youth, particularly disadvantaged ones, worldwide is a challenge itself. I have shared six inclusive innovation challenges so far: a) overcoming anaemia among women through extremely affordable solutions, b) creating awareness about women’s biology, including menstruation among particularly boys and the rest of the society so…
Global inclusive development challenges- meeting the unmet needs II There are problems on which several foundations have thrown billions of dollars but they still remain intractable. Last week I shared several such challenges with examples of some simple extremely affordable solutions but asking for more. Throwing more money doesn’t always help in generating more designs?…