Scouting for grassroots innovation

A television set that can be viewed from all the four sides, a fishing rod that gives off an alarm when a fish bites the bait, a bullock cart with brakes and a cycle made of wood! These are not figments of somebody's imagination.

These are innovations by rural folks in Bengal which have caught the eye of an NGO, National Innovation Foundation (NIF), and are waiting to be launched as viable commercial products the moment they catch the eyes of a venture capitalist.

In December 2007, Anil Gupta, chief of NIF, and his team in West Bengal, went on a rural walk, Shodh Yatra, in East Singhbhum, Jharkhand, and Purulia and Bankura in Bengal for eight days, looking for innovations made by rural people.

It was then that the team came across Bapi Roy who has designed the television set. Bapi Roy lives in the Bankura district of West Bengal. His innovation is an ordinary TV set but reflectors have been set up so that the screen can be viewed from all four sides.

NIF, whose main task is to scout for such innovations across rural India and secure intellectual property rights for them, has so far identified 70,000 innovations across the country and about 900 in Bengal alone.

It is now trying to find mentors who would help the villagers convert the ideas and products into commercially viable projects.

According to Gupta, executive vice-chairman of NIF, "Our main job is to tour states throughout the year, often on foot, sharing our scientific knowledge with villagers and sniffing out that hidden innovation in a place that may not have a road, electricity or school, but has a thinking mind."

NIF identifies grassroots innovators, documents their work, adds value to it, protects intellectual property rights and incubates the technology till their commercial release.

Funded by a Rs 20-crore corpus from the Department of Science and Technology, identifying and honouring these 'scientists in disguise' is the first step.

Gupta said, "We are trying to find mentors for these villagers in Bengal in order to facilitate the commercialisation of their innovations."

"We have received Rs 5 crore from SIDBI as innovation fund. We are also speaking to the Bengal government to assist these villagers so that their innovations could be commercialised. Commercialisation of these innovations and ideas would not only generate an income option for the villagers but the state, too, will be able to buy products at a much cheaper price," says Gupta.

"One way that the Government could assist these villagers is by providing them some time on radio where the villagers could pitch their innovations and potential buyers could contact them directly," Gupta added

Among NIF's finds is Vijay Pramanik of Purulia in West Bengal, who grew pumpkins and bottle gourd on the same plant. Sanjay Karmakar of east Singbhum in Jharkhand has innovated a fishing rod with alarm.

The moment a fish touches the bait, an alarm sets off, making it easier for the fisherman to catch the fish. Then there is Jagat Taran Ghosh of Panchal village in Bankura in West Bengal who has innovated brakes for a bullock cart and Vishvajeet Sutradhar of Purulia who has made a wooden bicycle.

Another innovation is by Dharani Dhar Mahato, in Purulia, who has designed a thresher that uses drums to separate the grain from the husk.

In February 2000, the Department of Science and Technology helped to establish NIF with the main goal of providing institutional support in scouting, spawning, sustaining and scaling up grassroots innovations and helping their transition to self supporting activities.