Creativity at grassroots needs to be harnessed

In a recent meeting organised at Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, chief minister announced a state level fund to support innovations by farmers.

ICAR, PPVFRA, Haryana Kisan Ayog and several other institutions were involved in honouring farmer breeders of crops and horticultural varieties and innovative practices. Not surprisingly, there were creative farmers from Gujarat also honoured on the occasion through NIF. What are the key building blocks which various states can put in place to harness the creativity at grassroots? Next week, I will share the institutional interventions that China is making to augment creativity at grassroots.

One of the first things that needs to be done is to create hunger for innovations at all levels, in formal as well as informal system. One of the drivers of innovations is to reduce unit costs per year. Thus if making a kilometre of road costs say Rs2 crore, then next year, it should cost say Rs1.8 crore or Rs1.6 crore by various creative improvements. Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand and some other states have used a simple technology developed indigenously which is to mix 5-10% powdered waste plastic with bitumen to make roads that are cheaper, last longer and are better for vehicular traffic. However, such innovations will not diffuse if there was no incentive to reduce unit cost and nobody tracked, recognised and rewarded such steps.

Second step is to create 'institutional memory' for innovations at different levels and in various sectors. Most public but even private institutions don't have a file on the table of CEO listing various ideas tried successfully or otherwise in the last week, month or year, forget, decade.

Third is to 'create competition for identifying the new ideas and also using new ideas'. It is not enough to scout innovations, it is also important to test, and replicate them. Today there is a crisis of water in most parts of the country and the world. It is obvious that we should be encouraging new innovations and experimentation to conserve, augment and distribute water efficiently.

Harbhajan Singh, a farmer from Haryana was awarded for developing a simple alternate row irrigation system for cotton. It reduced water requirement by half and incidentally also decreased expenditure behind pest control. When farmers use excessive water, the plants become succulent and pests find them very nice to eat.

Fourth, overcome the inertia caused by NIH (not invented here) complex. Is it necessary that all good ideas should occur to one leader, CM, CEO or PM? Why should not we learn from anyone? After all, this country has a tradition of learning even from Ravan, then why be shy to learn from those whose face you don't like?

Fifth, we should accept that there no one institution has all the resources that are necessary to take ideas forward. Collaboration is the key to future transformation. Some of the fiercest corporate rivals are learning to cooperate on some issues while competing on others. What gives us a feeling that we can manage without that strategy? But then the Columbus in us wants to discover a way forward on our own, even if we have made all the wrong calculations, as Columbus had done.

Six, having identified the need for cooperation, we should take urgent steps to recognise merit of challenging young students with technical, managerial, institutional, cultural problems in our society which are proving to be difficult to solve. Techpedia.in has provided one model but even in that, many secretaries to state governments and V-Cs of universities feel that they will do it their way. This is fine but is there any alternative to pooling all the information of projects done by students so that search cost of a student selecting a problem to work on can be reduced? Should any Indian or for that matter youth anywhere, be doing things that have been done already without some distinct improvement or novelty? Let us accept an idea till we can come out with better, more frugal and viable alternatives.

I hope that the New Year will help us turn a new leaf and we will start responding to creative aspiration of youth in formal and informal sector with greater alacrity, less hesitation and higher dedication.

The author is a professor at IIMA