Potter's Wheel

In the wake of globalisation, why should one pay attention to grassroot innovations? Does it matter if someone in a rural area has designed a mechanical coconut husker that simplifies the task? A grassroot innovator from Madurai has created a machine to peel garlic without damaging its quality. And entrepreneurs from Pakistan want to buy it. Another one from Singapore read about an arecanut peeler on the National Innovation Foundation website and placed an order.

More than 50,000 innovations and traditional knowledge scouted across 300 districts of India by the NIF, largely with Honey Bee Network's help, is not a mean achievement. For each innovation or instance of traditional knowledge documented, there are thousands waiting to be tapped. The Honey Bee Network's story is of making India innovative and a global leader in sustainable technologies. The poor are not just the "bottom of the pyramid" or consumers of products, they can provide knowledge and innovation.

How do we link knowledge-rich, economically poor people with modern institutions of science and technology, design, manufacturing and marketing to scale up their innovations? The Department of Science and Technology set up the NIF in March 2000 as a communication channel between creative voices at the grassroots and policymakers, entrepreneurs, investors and stakeholders in the knowledge and innovation chain. But we need more volunteers in the public and private sectors, voluntary organisations, farmers' and labourers' organisations to join hands. It would be appropriate if the 11th Five Year Plan takes innovations and entrepreneurship as the national planning system's focus.

The Honey Bee Network was set up 16 years ago to deal with the lack of accountability towards the creative knowledge holders. Can we ensure that people whose knowledge we document won't complain as we have not yet created a legal framework to protect their knowledge rights? In India, there are 4,00,000 technology students. If even one per cent of their projects were to add to local knowledge, 4,000 problems will get solved or at least analysed. Why don't government institutions address this issue?

We set up the Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) in 1993 to provide an institutional back-up to the Honey Bee Network. iim-a provided support for policy advocacy and institution building. In 1997, the first Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) was set up to link innovations and investment. GIAN also became a conduit to mobilise risk capital for small innovations and began the first micro venture innovation fund in India. In October 2003, SIDBI set up a Rs 5 crore fund at NIF to support innovations.

The incubation of these technologies through product development on a large scale is still a challenge. NIF has helped set up a network of GIAN centres, but we need more GIANs if support has to be provided to thousands of knowledge holders and grassroot innovators. Unless we realise that keeping the poor engaged in low value-adding activity will only perpetuate their poverty, a market for innovations will not emerge. The fact that thousands of crores spent on rural and agriculture development plans do not incorporate creative solutions developed by farmers or artisans proves there is a long distance to be covered. Today, the grassroot innovators are charged the same testing fee for their innovations as other corporations. This needs to change and scientific labs must cross-subsidise.

The MoU between CSIR and NIF signed last year and the discussions with ICAR have given hope that the linkages between formal and informal knowledge systems will become stronger. We have begun several initiatives to deepen our understanding of the dynamics of making India innovative. We are setting up AASTIIK (Academy for Augmenting Sustainable Technological Inventions, Innovations and Traditional Knowledge) to encourage people from formal and informal sectors to analyse the heuristic means used by innovators and understand how social capital can be enhanced around these innovations.

Having walked for 2,600 kms in the last seven and a half years, I can say there is a tremendous vibrance at the grassroot level expressed through creative solutions which needs to be recognised, respected and rewarded. President Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam deserves our gratitude for honouring these innovators in the last two award functions and boosting the morale of a secular, socially-committed network, who are developing solutions to persistent old problems.

Democratisation of innovations and reversing the value chain from consumer to producer are two key features of people-driven innovations. Increasing demand for grassroots innovations from companies in the US, Singapore, Pakistan, Malaysia, Brazil and many other countries demonstrates the potential grassroots innovations have to influence globalisation.