‘Majority of innovations come from economically disadvantaged regions’

Innovation has always come from the community that has been through unfavourable conditions as the situations, be it economic, social or climatic, act as a trigger. Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, professor Anil K Gupta feels that education does not play a very positive role in triggering or sustaining innovations. In an e-mail interview, Gupta tells DNA
 that there is no relation between education and innovation and spells out what drives rural innovators.

Gupta is best-known for fostering innovations, especially by rural folk, across India. He is actively involved with the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), Honey Bee Network, Society for Research & Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies & Institutions (SRISTI) and the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN), all of which he either established or helped found. 

While travelling across the Indian hinterland, you have come across several interesting ideas. Do their creators have a purely utilitarian motive or an economic one too?
The triggers of grassroot innovations are being studied by a senior colleague and Ph D scholar Riya Sinha Chokakula. It is apparent from the initial findings that innovators have wide range of motivations which includes being purely utilitarian. Only in some cases, they have economic aspirations. In most cases, technologies are at the proof of concept stage and therefore have to travel a long distance before taking the form of a product. There are a large number of innovators who have solved problems of third parties or communities without any expectations of returns. However, the paradox is that their generosity, many a time, is the reason for their poverty. It should not be so. And therefore, NIF decided to invest in their ideas to improve their quality of life.

Is it fair to say that we are seeing innovation at the bottom of the pyramid?
There are wide variety of innovations and traditional knowledge-based innovative practices discovered by the knowledge-rich and economically poor class. I don’t like the phrase “bottom of the pyramid” too much because it is very obvious that the poor are not at the bottom of all pyramids. They are only at the bottom of economic pyramid but not of the ethical, institutional, cultural or innovation pyramid. While there are innovations attempted by medium-class farmers or artisans, the majority of the innovations are from the under-class.

Does an unfavourable economic condition, which goads one to strive harder, or a healthy financial scenario, which gives one the comfort and resources to ideate, drive innovation?
The innovations at the community level are generally triggered by stress which includes economic, climatic, ecological or social. The urge to overcome the problems faced by oneself or by the community manifests much more among less prosperous people, though there are well-off farmers growing cash crops who have developed plant varieties or farm machinery.

But, given the pattern, one can say unequivocally that the majority of the innovations have come from economically disadvantaged regions or ecologically stressed regions. Even in Gujarat, the largest number of innovations has come from the drier regions. Perhaps, comfort and resource surplus do not create a desire to develop solutions. Voluntary suffering and frugality perhaps are necessary in our context to innovate. Even if one has more resources, it might be a good idea to create an artificial scarcity or stress to be creative.

NIF’s example is so eloquent in this regard. After its establishment in 2000, NIF’s budget went down every year and its data and knowledge base rose. For SRISTI, the stress was even higher though it gave rise to GIAN, NIF, MVIF (Micro Venture Innovation Fund) and techpedia.in besides numerous other initiatives such as Sattvik, the Traditional Food Festival and Shodh Yatras through which we learn about the grassroots genius on foot.

Which areas will come up with more innovations and why?
We get innovations from all sectors. The rural farm and non-farm sector is obviously much more represented in our knowledge base. Thus, farm machinery, household utilities, energy generation and conservation, herbal drugs for human and animal use, plant protection, i.e., herbal pesticides and growth promoters, plant varieties, transport, food and agro processing are reasonably well represented in our knowledge base.

The general perception is that an ideator in a city has an edge over his/her counterpart in the hinterland, maybe because of better education opportunities in particular and better exposure in general. Do you agree with this?
In the world of ideas, the city has in fact a disadvantage except among children. If people from city having higher educational opportunities were better ideators, then most of the awards that NIF has given in the last 10 years should have gone to them. In the over 300 awards, cities have played a very small role. Metropolitans are actually negligible. Perhaps education debilitates and desensitises people though that does not mean that one doesn’t need education. It only implies that we need a different kind of education.

Greater exposure sometimes makes one less curious. Many of the innovators have gone through the cycle of isolation while generating ideas. Too much of connectedness may help in diffusion but not in ideation. The tendency to seek reinforcement invariably becomes stronger in highly networked communities. Innovators don’t seek much reinforcement because they are aware that they might instead get ridiculed. Only in a few cases, city may have an advantage like where fabrication facilities are required at low cost. Even here, small cities have an advantage over larger cities. In the case of children, because of our limitations in reaching rural schools, we get far more entries in the IGNITE competition organised by NIF from cities. However, whenever we organise an idea competition in rural areas and villages, we do get many ideas from children.

How big a role does education play in innovation?
Education does not play a very positive role in triggering or sustaining innovations except in the high-tech sector. We have mapped more than 1,00,000 engineering projects at techpedia.in pursued by 3,50,000 students from all over the country. One can find for oneself. Still, some of the very creative projects had been pursued in polytechnics rather than in IITs and NITs. The mindset the current education system creates is that of conformity rather than creativity.

Tell us of some of the interesting ideas that you’ve come across.
Piyush Agarwal, a class 11 student from Jharkhand, thought about a problem that most mothers have faced. When they dry clothes on the roof and it rains suddenly, they go and collect the clothes before they get wet. He has designed a sensor-based motorised cloth line which will wind itself to bring the clothes under the shade.

To control noise pollution, a class 12 student, Mani Bhushan, also from Jharkhand, developed an idea of infrared, another sensor based systems, by which a person will get a small sound or light signal when the vehicle behind so triggers it. There are a large number of other innovations such as the pressure cooked-based coffee-making machine by Rozadeen from Champaran in Bihar, which deserve attention.