Integrating Minds, Socializing Technologies, www.techpedia.in Date-7th March 2011 To cut through the inertia of non-contact and to develop a new model of Industry-Institute Collaboration based on innovation at the very college level fuelled by compassion to socio-technical needs ,Techpedia.in ( www.techpedia.in ) supported by Sristi is now making efforts to integrate the efforts of numerous students and faculties through various national technical events. Techpedia.in and honeybee network are linking and assisting numerous group of students via various national technical events conducted across the country. The problems of dozen most backward districts are being posed to these students along with socio-technical needs of people at very bottom level of society. Innovations are being scouted and nurtured via this process via www.techpedia.in breaking inertia of space and time. The major findings of this exercise depicts that students at various technical colleges are now addressing the real life situations of masses and they are not only trying to create value for money but also attempting in creation of value for many. 

 

Nearly 27 million babies are born in India each year. Of these, 1.0 million die before completing the first four weeks of life. This accounts for nearly 25% of the total 3.9 million neonatal deaths worldwide. Spandan Dey of MIT Bishnupur) and Shiv Kumar Agarwal of Jadavpur University have attempted in designing LOW COST MULTI-CHANNEL BABYINCUBATOR which will be integrating features like humidifier, filter etc., and the price is estimated around Rs. 10000 only compared to a modern incubator costing over a lakh INR. This innovation is scouted from technical event arranged at IIT-Khargpur with Techpedia.in .Pic- Similarly to address the need of millions of backward villages in getting purified drinking water a student Yask kulshreshtha of Birla Vishvakarma Mahavidyalaya, have designed an automatic mechanical way to purify water and have been scouted from a similar event arranged at IIT-Bombay jointly with Techpedia.in .This innovation for masses is found to be useful for domestic tanks, providing better quality of potable drinking water to each and every common man within his affordable price limit of nearly 150 rs. The frugal innovation as claimed has been out put of continuous efforts triggered by compassion to help the people of tribal and backward places of the country. 

 

To help thousands of people including women, children and the elderly persons for moving luggage down the crowded stair cases for over bridges and platforms, in a railway station and workers in construction sites who also face problems lifting heavy loads to the upper floors under construction. The daily wage of a porter or a worker depends on the load they carry and the time taken to do so and hence calls for a quick, efficient and affordable product. by Atula Kumar Panda, Arpan Bandhu have designed The TriStar Trolley at NIT Rourkela at an event assisted by www.techpedia.in and NIT Rourkela at national level. 

 

A frugal but impactable innovation has been scouted at TKMCE Kerala at an event jointly with Techpedia for Cloud Based Virtual Tamil Operating System developed by Rajadevi R , Saran Kumar N M and Savitha C Kongu Engineering College, Tamil Nadu.The innovation claims to provide the permanent solution for long-term dream of Tamil-computing World, by providing Cloud-computing based permanent Tamil Interface for 7 crore Tamil people. 

 

Few socio technical issues of one of the districts in Konkan region is Raigad district like work on brick-kilns are compassionately addressed by students team to help the needy people where labors work for 6 months in a year, including couple (husband & wife) who makes about 1.5 lakh bricks during this period with poor traditional process. This implies young technology minds of even lesser known institutes are developing solutions by internalizing the pain of others as one’s own, as reflected in the eternal ethos of our society viz., samvedana. To increase the efficiency of workers and to use the locally available materials, in no condition cost more than few 100 rupees such solutions have been traced in an event arranged at IIT- Bombay with Techpedia.in and honeybee network. In similar even an innovation developed by Vijayan, Aparna and his team for solving issues related to manual water fetching system that would reduce manual water fetching load for rural Konkan region, which is claimed to be technologically simple and easy to understand with low maintenance cost ,for use on hills & plains. This wearable water bag with water purifiers is a shoulder resting wearable water bag that can be lifted off and easily worn! and having Capacity 20 liters nearly. 

 

Techpedia believes these competitions and collaborations among the students will generate not only new solutions but many more new heuristics which will spawn further ideas and innovations. . This model of collaborative and competitive problem solving will achieve results at an extremely low cost which is unimaginable in the current costing structure. The frugal, affordable, accessible and accountable innovations will emerge from the mindfields of technical universities, colleges and labs in small towns as well as bigger metros. The above process will assist to take on challenges to motivate students to take up not only the unsolved problems of MSME but also informal sector of society. Techpedia has assisted in more than a dozen National technical events in various NITs, IITs and others in past months in the objective to break the space and time barrier so that students from various part of country will address their local as well as global socio technically relevant issues for benefit of masses. 

 

This will certainly integrate all efforts where Indian technical institutes are spending around 400 crores in making various technical fiestas in technical institutes across the country every year and deliver a handful of solutions to industry and society in the need of the hour. This will lead to one more step towards socializing the Technologies.