These innovations would have been lost in the rural quagmire if it hadn’t been for Sristi. The organisation has documented as many as 36,000 traditional remedies and green innovations from 360 districts of India. Patents have been applied for. Sristi was the brainchild of Prof Anil Gupta, executive vice-chairman of the National Innovation Foundation (NIF) and a professor at IIM-A. "I always felt I drew so much from the fields which helped me get hefty consultancy fees but never gave it back," says Gupta. Gupta’s idea was to put together this rural knowledge, to create a triangle of "innovation, investment and enterprise." Started in 1990, he called it the Honey Bee network. "A honeybee collects pollen from flowers and connects flowers through pollination. We hoped that if creative people in different cultures communicate and cross-fertilise their repertoire of ideas, the low self-image of the poor will change and new sustainable technologies and institutions will emerge." Honey Bee is an international network of farmers, academics, scientists and artisans, who scout villages for grassroot innovations. It also publishes a regular newsletter in seven languages. In 1993, this informal footloose body was institutionalised as Sristi.