The Planning Commission has come up with a whole new interesting concept and coinage — frugal innovation given the country’s larger social compulsions and ambition of inclusivity.

 

According to the panel, while innovation, per se, is about products and processes that produce them, innovation can also be about doing things differently to produce results that are “very desirable” but cannot be obtained by “business as usual.” In its appraisal of the 11th Five Year Plan, the panel observes that while India needs innovation to accelerate its growth, however, innovation needs to be ‘frugal’ to make this growth more inclusive and meaningful. Innovations must be such that they cater to huge backlog of unmet needs in education, health and provision of other public services, it adds.

 

Noting that while ‘frugal’ innovation will help produce products and services at ‘frugal’ cost and ‘affordable’ for people at low levels of incomes, it says, these innovations must also be ‘frugal’ in the resources required to produce them. Stressing the need to stimulate innovation eco-system to develop solutions for country’s agenda of inclusive and sustainable growth, the panel, has called for a national mission for inclusive innovation. Pointing out that there is weakness in the eco-system for innovation in India as small start-ups are starved of adequate investment support, it has suggested setting up a central monitoring agency to ensure inclusive ‘frugal’ innovation happens, besides floating a fund to support social enterprise initiatives that will catalyse socially useful and inclusive products and services for the poorer people. Incidentally, in order to spur inclusive growth, National Innovation Council Chairman Sam Pitroda had mooted a Rs 1,000-crore corpus to nurture culture of innovation in the country. He wanted the Centre to chip in with a 10-20 per cent share in creating the corpus, which, he hoped, would eventually grow to size of Rs 5,000 crore with public buying its equities.

 

 

Monitoring agency-Explaining the need to evolve an innovative bent of mind to spur inclusive growth, he said: “We do not have to solve the problem of the rich. They have the money and the power to get it solved,” adding the panel would encourage innovation to solve the problems of the poor and the masses. 

 

Further, stating the need to provide initial subsidy to cover the gap between commercially realisable price and costs of production, it has noted the need for a central monitoring agency to make inclusive ‘frugal’ innovation happen. While cautioning that the agency must not impinge upon the freedom required for innovation, it said, the agency and its team could lead through influence and not by positional authority.