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In Bengal’s Purulia district, businessman Mahabir Chaubey has come up with inventions that can help better home appliances, medical care and construction. Fired by a desire to make life better — and coupled with a creative instinct — Chaubey manages both his profession and passion with sincerity. Taking time off from his courier and battery charging work, he has developed a smokeless oven, a recordable stethoscope and improved quality bricks. |
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But a bit of fame — though no fortune, yet — has come his way thanks to a unique wood screw he has developed that may make the simple task of fixing a screw on wooden structures even simpler and more efficient. Chaubey has bagged an award from the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), a seven-year-long effort to track down grassroots inventors. |
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These are usually untrained — sometimes even unschooled — individuals who through spontaneous ingenuity have hatched technology-based ideas to solve local problems. And this not in laboratories, but in the backyards of homes, on farms, in rudimentary workshops and small-scale industries. |
| SMALL WONDER: (From top) The earthquake alarm system and Ajooba tubelight regulator by N. Jethani, and Nitai Dasgupta on his 5-gear cycle |
The NIF — launched by Prof. Anil Gupta of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad — tracks down such innovators, documents their work, gets it evaluated from faculty in the engineering institutions and, whenever possible, helps incubate the ideas for commercialisation. |
| Twice a year, Gupta and his scouts cover nearly 200 km on foot — which he calls the shodhyatra, a journey towards exploration. The aim: sharing scientific knowledge with villagers and sniffing out innovations taking shape in creative minds, in places that may not have roads, electricity or schools. |
| “West Bengal is a mine of rural talent and innovation,” Gupta said at a workshop held last month at the Indian Statistics Institute, Calcutta. The event was a precursor to a 10-day shodhyatra to be undertaken in the state in December. A host of grassroots innovators were felicitated on the occasion. Sharing the honours with Chaubey was Usha Shankar Bhattacharya, training officer at Bengal Engineering College, Sibpur, Howrah, whose invention hinges on energy conservation. Bhattacharya has devised a pressure-type kerosene stove, an improved version of the conventional one. The new stove has better thermal efficiency and produces less soot. The sound, too, is minimised. |
| Pulak Pal of Lalbagh, Murshidabad, came up with a toilet-flushing device and water system for the physically challenged. The efforts of Pal, physically impaired himself, once again demonstrated that necessity is the mother of invention. |
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But although Nitai Dasgupta of Berhampur is the originator of many ideas, none of his contraptions could be displayed. That’s because the septuagenarian had to sell them off to make ends meet. Dasgupta only showed photographs of his innovations, much to the audience’s appreciation. Among them were a cycle ambulance, a motorcycle ambulance, an amphibious tri-cycle and a 5-gear cycle. The devices were reported in a vernacular daily, but he never got the support necessary for further action. Dasgupta also has a fascinating ability: of writing with both hands simultaneously such that one forms the mirror image or inverted image of the other. The Berhampur maker is still buzzing with ideas, but these have remained in the realm of conception only because of a lack of funds.Narayan Chandra Bachar of 24 Parganas, a farmer by profession, was awarded for engineering 28 new varieties of paddy. |
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Apart from a unique earthquake alarm system, N. Jethani of Siliguri had many more interesting devices up his sleeve. His “Ajooba” tube light, if commercialised, can help lessen our electricity bills — for the intensity of the light can be regulated, just like the speed of a fan. Jethani has also devised an auto-thermo control cooling system, which regulates the speed of a fan as per the room temperature. But what appealed to the audience most was his life-saving system — a finger ring that can alert the police station by using radio frequency waves. |
| Manoj Mandal displayed the world’s smallest pressure cooker — smaller than your little finger in length — an innovation that has earned him a mention in the Limca Book of Records. |
| Ordinary lives, routine chores, but with a desire to dream seems to be the mantra of these individuals whose innovations, though simple, have the power to change lives. “Pioneers don’t have role models” — astronaut Kalpana Chawla’s remark perhaps could never have sounded truer.
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