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From
Bullet motorcycles modified to function as ploughs to high-yielding
cardamom varieties, SRISTI in Ahmedabad is helping hundreds of
grassroots inventors and innovators to conserve biodiversity and
develop eco-friendly solutions to local problems
Mansukhbhai Jagani is an ordinary farmer. Like
many other farmers, Mansukhbhai is not well educated; he studied only
up to class 5. But when the drought situation in his home state of
Gujarat made it impossible to afford bullocks for his plough, this
young man hit upon an idea that is now transforming the region.
The idea is as brilliant as it is simple. Using
his Bullet motorcycle, he developed a machine system called Santi for a
small farm or holding, complete with attachments for tilling, weeding
and sowing. Farmers across the district have caught on to the idea, and
there are now close to 40 Santis in use across drought-stricken Amreli
district. Apart from being extremely efficient, it is
affordable. The attachment to a diesel-powered Royal Enfield Bullet
costs only Rs 14,000-18,000, making it a much cheaper option than other
mechanical ploughs. It weeds, ploughs and sows an acre of farmland at
about Rs 8, a fraction of the cost of maintaining a pair of bullocks. Mansukhbhai's plough is merely one of the
projects supported by Society for Research and Initiatives for
Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI), an Ahmedabad-based
voluntary agency that supports such innovations in sustainable
technologies. SRISTI was set up in 1993 to "strengthen the capacity of
grassroots inventors, innovators and ecopreneurs engaged in conserving
biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solutions to local problems". The man behind the organisation is Dr Anil
Kumar Gupta, a professor at the Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad, who has been championing the cause of thousands of unknown,
and in most cases poor, creative individuals scattered all over India.
Being far removed from the modern organised world of business, many of
them are unaware of their worth, as well as the rights and
opportunities available to them. Dr Gupta firmly believes that "a key resource
is the knowledge of the poor". It was this belief that led him to start
the Honey Bee network in the early-1990s, to serve as a database of
information on grassroots innovations. Thirteen years on, there are
12,000 entries, including several from Mongolia, Vietnam, Uganda,
Kenya, Colombia, Ecuador and North America. The database is a veritable treasure chest of
traditional knowledge, folklore, ideas, techniques and product
innovations. The Honey Bee newsletter is today published in six Indian
languages plus English and Spanish and is distributed in 75 countries.
The Honey Bee network soon turned into a
movement with a view to tap into India's vast knowledge reserves.
Various other organisations have been set up under the SRISTI umbrella.
GIAN (Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network) founded in 1997 seeks
to bring notable inventions to the attention of venture capitalists and
financiers while the NIF (National Innovation Foundation) in
association with CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research)
seeks to evaluate and prioritise these worthwhile ideas.
And there is obviously no shortage of them.
Ideas like the high-yield cardamom variety developed by Sebastian
Joseph and his son Regimon in Kerala's Idukki district, which is now
planted in over 80% of farms. And the oil expeller developed by Kalpesh
Gujjar of Gujarat, which efficiently crushes almost all varieties of
oil-producing seeds. GIAN has helped Gujjar secure a grant for
improvements to this expeller and it is likely to be mass-produced
soon.
Meanwhile, Mansukhbhai's motorcycle continues
to plough the fields of Amreli. He is busy making improvements to it,
such as fitting a reverse gear. With SRISTI's support, he has won
national recognition, which is worth much more than commercial success
for these grassroots innovators. Dr Gupta continues to teach at IIM, making
sure that his students graduate with a keen awareness of the Indian
reality and a desire to help. A few of them recently got together to
set up a $1 million micro-credit fund for village entrepreneurs.
According to Dr Gupta, "The rate at which we keep receiving these
innovations makes me confident that India will soon become the largest
incubator of innovations worldwide."
Contact: B/h Pharmacy College Mess,
Boys
Hostel Campus,
Navrangapura
Ahmedabad
- 380 009
Gujarat,
India
Phone:
(91-79) 7912792
Fax:
(91-79) 7913293
E-mail:
info@sristi.orgThis e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
(Infochange News and Features, June 2003)
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