My dear friend Dr Sudarshan Iyengar has mentioned several characteristics that may qualify an innovation as Gandhian. Mr Mashelkar has poignantly stressed that, "peer parai jane re." The ability to understand pain of others was an inherent feature of Gandhian solutions in any field.

 

To me, it was an effort of \'Srijansheelta\' borne out of \'Samvedana\' - innovation born out of empathetic perceptions of societal problems. The decentralised manufacture or fabrication of a solution would have been preferred by Gandhi over any centralised system of planning or manufacture.

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Gandhi would also like the problems of the most disadvantaged to be included in the agenda. He wouldn\'t like us wasting materials or design such products which lend themselves to production of more waste. Greenness of a technology was embedded in his famous quote about the world having enough for everybody\'s need but not for one\'s greed.

 

More than 5,000 entries received by SRISTI through Techpedia.in could not have been shortlisted without some guiding principles. We looked at novelty, social application, environment friendliness, frugality, empathy, and in a separate category, stretching of the technological edge.

 

Experts from many institutions - PERD, IITB, IITGn, GTU and others, many retired scientists, experts from the private sector and NIF helped shortlist contenders for the awards. The MLM principle (More from Less for Many) that Dr Mashelkar has been advocating includes these principles.

 

Not all technologies awarded would have equally optimised each of these principles. Let us take case of a convertible manual stair-climbing wheelchair by Shanu Sharma of

IIT Kanpur. Shanu didn\'t want to add motor to it because she was afraid that addition of complexity might preclude affordability.

 

She studied the way a child climbs stairs - sitting backwards, and mimicked it in the basic frame. Shanu is now designing a chair that can climb as well as move on levelled surfaces. She has also worked on a hand pump integrated with a filtration plus disinfection system using ultraviolet LEDs.

 

Kirti, Sankhya and Susanth from IIT Kharagpur were awarded for a similar concept with different design. Pratik Gandhi, Chintak, Sumit, Bhargav, Priyesh and Vanraj from LD College of Engineering, Ahmedabad developed another version of a wheelchair which could be navigated by and tongue movements, and also by a joystick.

 

Saurabh and Rahul of Bhutta College of Engineering and Technology, Ludhiana developed a very interesting application for deaf people. They generally use sign language to communicate their thoughts.

 

Unless one knows the sign language, it becomes difficult to communicate but deaf and mute people may like to make friends with people with normal hearing.

 

What these young innovators from Punjab did was to map the signs through image processing software into text and then convert it into speech so that the other person can hear what they are saying. The normal conversation can take place when the same system converts the voice on the other side into signs.

 

This is really a compassionate innovation which bigger laboratories with larger resources have not been able to develop.

 

I will discuss about a few other innovations next week but let me highlight that unless we can invest in these ideas, help them become products and services, mere recognition will not help. I hope that the readers will reflect and also act on the imperative action.

 

We need resources from masses for developing innovations also for masses. Shortly, SRISTI will launch a crowd funding platform where people can contribute small amounts for taking such ideas forward.

 

If you want to join such efforts, write back. We can experience Gandhi through such small steps of connection, compassion, collaboration and creativity.

 

The author is a professor at IIMA