Recently, among various Gandhian Young Technological Innovation (GYTI) Awards given by the Hon’ble President of India, there were a few ideas which addressed some of the widely prevalent problems needing extremely affordable solutions. As in the previous years, innovations from and innovations for grassroots were showcased at the Festival of Innovations and Entrepreneurship hosted by the The President’s Office. The National Innovation Foundation, helped in organising the FINE brought more than 200 innovations from and for grassroots at FINE.
Vikas, Pooja and Saurabh, students at IIT Delhi, a GYTI awardee team which has designed a Rs.10000 attachment that can convert a conventional microscope into a florescent microscope. And that too in just Rs 20,000, half for an ordinary microscope and another half for the attachment. It presently cost a few lacs. Without such a microscope, TB causing organism cannot be identified. If we don’t diagnose it in time and in the field, then treatment will become even more difficult. India has decided to get over this problem by 2022 by having full coverage. Similarly, majority of the primary health centres do not have autoclave facility to sterilize various tools used by the doctors. A Rs.500/= solution by Saugandha Das and Archit Devarajan, students of ICT, Mumbai, will do it. While giving intravenous injection or taking a blood sample because of difficulty in finding the vein, one has to pierce the needle several times. An extremely affordable solution by Irivikram Annamalai, IDC, IIT Bombay would make it possible to detect this at a very low cost. One can go on with many such solutions.
Many of similar innovations for grassroots innovations have not diffused because of many reasons, a) the industry lack the hunger for innovations,b) an efficient supply chain could not be built by innovators cum entrepreneurs association, c) design inputs in conversion of prototype to product and utility were lacking or not affordable, d) pilot procurement by public agencies is not being done to have larger scale testing, feedback, redesign if needed and approval for large scale procurement etc. in fact for many innovation based entrepreneurs at grassroots may also need financing for pilot as well as normal production. Advance against order will reduce their borrowing requirement. While big companies are able to manage advance but start up often don’t get such an advance payment against the orders. The time has come to rethink the problem of building a holistic ecosystem.
During the forthcoming 25th year of celebration of SRISTI and 30th years of Honey Bee Network, June 1-3, 2018 at Grambharati, Amrapur; many of these questions will be discussed threadbare to develop strategy for future transformation of our society. Among many actors who have remained un/under recognised are the ones who help in connecting communities, companies, creative innovators, connecting distribution chain, financing logistic partners and feedback collectors for redesigning the product, the process, the service and the system. How can start-up policies and agencies become more empathetic towards innovators. Nattu Bhai is a struggling innovator who spent almost 16-17 years to crack the problem of picking cotton balls from rainfed cotton variety like 797. He spent lacs of his own resources besides getting support from GIAN and NIF. But if such innovators dont get financial support at this stage for scaling up a solution that no other private or public agency could provide in the last so many decades, then how will productivity improve, farmers; income increase and loss of cotton due to untimely rain be prevented. In such cases, where no other solution exists in the country, e should there be a second thought?
I hope that we can develop a more responsive and agile eco-system for supporting inclusive innovations all over the country so that the pace of social transformation can be increased. We will explore durable solutions so that struggle of such farmers can be reduced if not eliminated.
