Tuesday, September 5, 2017

The knowledge economy at the grassroots

...the natives are so full of ingenuity that they make any new thing by pattern how hard so ever it seems to be done....

Rarely do these young men get noticed by pilgrims who throng the holy city of Haridwar for taking a dip in icy waters of the Ganga, and offer their obeisance by throwing coins in it. What is salvation for some is sheer survival for the others. Holding a transparent glass pane and standing through the day in water, these men search for coins that lie at the bottom of the flowing river. By pressing the glass pane against the turbulent flow the coins lying at the bottom get clearly located. Fluid dynamics they would not have even heard of but they know the value of the idea that has eased their lives. Ask them, and they won’t even know who has been behind this innovation.

This is one amongst innumerable innovations that abound in everyday living of a largely impoverished society in India. From handy tips to improvised tools and from enhanced techniques to adaptive practices, there is a rich repository of innovations on offer. Think of the multiple variants of ‘scare crow’ to protect mature crops or the ‘belled rat’ that drives away others of its species. Even the buttermilk churning washing machine and the motorcycle-cum- tractor have been locally evolved, to make life easier for million others. What fuels innovative desire in ordinary people, and why are such innovations gifted anonymously to the society at large?

There could be many explanations for this. Simply put, improvisation is the mother of survival and a lost opportunity remains an unforgiveable waste. Resource constraint is viewed as a challenge by the poor, firing imagination in the most ordinary of minds. As a result, people do not succumb to the constraints but transcend them by improvising on inputs and reducing costs. An English traveler during the Mughal period had recorded that ‘the natives are so full of ingenuity that they make any new thing by pattern how hard so ever it seems to be done.’ It will suffice to say that an Indian is inherently an entrepreneur and willingly a devotee, nurturing a DNA of innovation for the larger good of the society.

Yet, in the welter of contradictions it may be risky to paint a nation of people with a single brush. By default people are innovative but they are spaced by socio-cultural differences, and thrive in diverse ecosystems of challenges and opportunities. Few ecosystems mould some of them into entrepreneurs, while a large number is left unattended on the margins. In his quarter century of efforts at documenting and celebrating informal knowledge produced at the grassroots, Anil Gupta displays a seriousness of purpose in fostering voluntarism to scout innovations from the grassroots. Else, the double-decker root bridge from Meghalaya, an efficient brick kiln from Andhra Pradesh, an innovative tree climber from Kashmir, and the bamboo windmill for water lifting from Gujarat would not have earned social recognition.

Grassroots Innovation chronicles the personal journey of the author in building an institutional architecture that has ensured respect, recognition and rewards for unsung innovators spread across the country. Each of the more than 200,000 ideas, innovations and knowledge practices have been registered at the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), set up by the Government of India. Out of the registered innovations, NIF has filed for more than 730 patents and about two dozen plant variety protection applications on behalf of the grassroots innovators.

What began as a voluntary effort through the Honey Bee Network has grown vertically; the process of translating an innovation into a good or service that creates value for the inventor through the payment it may receive from the potential customers has been set in motion. Though the process has been carefully designed, it seems these are still early days for the entire value chain to be fully operational. Part of the problem rests in keeping the cost and also the supply chain of these easy-to-use innovations frugal. One may baulk at this characterization but it does throw up a challenge more for the promoter of innovation, than the innovator himself. After all, grassroots innovators have rarely been inventing products or processes for the market.

The overtly interpretive acrobatics by the author in lending philosophical perspective to the social capital of grassroots innovations has reduced an interesting narrative into an exercise in theorizing the sociology of innovative culture. It raises more questions than what the author had set out to address. If the resource constraints give wings of imagination to the impoverished for being innovative, will connecting them to the marketplace of opportunity not curtail their inherent freedom of expression? What is the relationship between the idea of freedom at the grassroots and the rational for institutionalizing marketable perfection out of it? In the end, are the high ideals of an innovative culture need to be tagged to a monetary value outside the society that nurtures it? It could be anybody’s guess if creating a marketable opportunity for grassroots innovations can nurture the backend ecosystem to continue generating useful ideas.    

Aamir Khan’s 3 Idiots had scored brownie points in using some of these innovations in challenging a system of education that nurtures clones of a kind. In contrast, Anil Gupta’s Grassroots Innovation struggles to bring clarity between thoughts and reality. Yet, it gives a tour d’Horizon of the enriching world of grassroots innovations. Part illuminating and part preachy, the lengthy narrative can be tough going for readers unfamiliar with the subject. It nonetheless throws light on some unusual questions on and about the mainstream knowledge economy.

Grassroots Innovation
by Anil Gupta
Penguin Books, New Delhi
Extent: 381, Price Rs. 599

This was first published in the Hindu BusinessLine weekend magazine Blink on Sept 23, 2017. 

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