Swadesh is a movie starring Sharukh khan in a role of Mohan Bhargav, a NRI who works in NASA. He lands in a small village of India in search of his nanny. Looking at struggle of locals for electricity, he engineers hydroelectricity for village. If you say he is a hero in the movie and can do anything, no….there are real time heroes who have actually brought such innovative ideas to the benefit of rural mass and these heroes are not always people who studied abroad etc, these are one among rural many times. Unfortunate fact is that they hardly get noticed and get support from government. The inventions and implementations are often limited to the small area around them. Very less has been done to encourage them and adopt the techniques to rest of the India.
Why I’m bogging it today? Today on CNN-IBN, amidst lot of hulla-gulla news of India wining CB tri series, it telecasted at the end a small news about botany Prof.Anil Joshi who has upgraded watermills used for grinding grains to generate electricity. His effort has today brought lights to about 1000 villages of Uttarakhand. A real life hero appeared in an interview in his simple Khadi attire. Professor has an intention to extend his efforts beyond Jammu, Kashmir, to states of north east and even to china.
Hilly regions of Himalalayas often suffer from power shortages. Watermills are used since time immemorial (more than 200 years old at least) to grind grains to flour. With little up gradation these can be easily used to generate electricity. Can you believe this technology can be used to generate 2500 MW or 1200 million rupees per hour of electricity!!! Since watermills already exist, there is not much effort on investing on infrastructure. These are going to workout cheaper and effective than large hydroelectric power plants and less hazardous to environment. If implemented, it is going to boost local economy.
There are so many talented and dedicated innovative Indians working at grass root levels like Prof.Anil Joshi. There is no support and encouragement from government. We keep hearing so many such ideas coming from locals too who are not researchers but hobbyists or inventors born out of need. If good ideas are considered and implemented India would be a still better place to live.
When we talk about innovation and creativity in India it is often limited to Information Technology. Time to remember; innovation is not only about IT, it is also about useful technologies that help day today activities in smallest of small towns, villages in India. All don’t need electronic gadgets!!!
There are not enough organizations involved in encouraging and building on innovative ideas. Here are few I found:
1. National Innovation Foundation - This is a non profit organization supported by gvt of India. I could not find much info on this as there is some problem with website. www.nif.org.in
2. India Innovates: http://www.indiainnovates.com/products.html
3. Jamnalal Bajaj foundation which awards such inventions. Anyone in research and development can volunteer to involve in this work. http://www.innovationsofindia.com/
4. SRISTI (Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions): http://www.sristi.org
5. Honey Bee Network: http://knownetgrin.honeybee.org/honeybee.htm
6. GIAN : Grassroot innovations augmentation network based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. http://www.gian.org/
We need more number of such organizations.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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