One has to travel around 500 kms from Lakhimpur to reach the nearest big city, Guwahati. In the place that can at best be described as remote and removed, Uddhav Bharali dared to dream.

While going about chasing the rainbow — in his case, making cost-effective and user-friendly scientific innovations — nothing Bharali deemed as impossible to overcome or achieve: neither the geographical handicap facing Lakhimpur, nor the lack of support initially from his family.

Today, after 18 inventions to his credit, Bharali’s effort to make use of his training as a student of technical engineering through ingenious means has been vindicated with Discovery Channel’s Beyond Tomorrow programme, which highlights grassroot-level innovation in India and abroad and which features him.

For Bharali, it all began with a cane-stripping machine, which he designed without any sort of financial support. “Though my family accepted me later on, I did not receive any support from the Assam government,” he says.

The Ramie decorticating machine, a mechanized weeding machine and a betel nut cutting machine followed, with Bharali making up for the lack of funds with his unbridled enthusiasm. “Facing an acute financial crunch, I gave up inventing new things for a while. But then I knew that I had to continue working,” says Bharali. “Developing the simplified version of the Polythene Film Extrusion machine was a challenge — the actual cost of the machine was Rs five lakh, while I did it for Rs 67,000.”

In Kolkata last week to showcase his latest discovery, the Pomegranate Peeling Machine, Bharali says he accepts any assignment that comes his way. “Anything that can be done manually can be mechanized. My next assignment is a Compact Tea Plan for a private tea company in West Bengal,” says Bharali, before adding, “the device I’m making should cost around Rs two lakh, though its normal rate is about Rs two crore. The entire process from withering to the final production of the tea will take eight hours and it will have the capacity to process 100 kgs of tea. This machine will be ready in the next 3 months.”

Bharali attributes his success to the National Innovation Foundation (NIF), who in their attempt to discover grassroot innovators of India, acknowledged his inventions. “It is NIF that took care of everything, starting from marketing my products to bringing me into the limelight,” he says.

Bharali got recognition on an international scale when he invented the Cassava peeling machine. “Global attempts to discover a machine like this was on for the last 30 years, before I devised this machine in 2002. African and Central American countries immediately recognized my invention. The powder extracted from the Cassava root is very nutritious and very much used in foreign countries,” he says.

The man’s ambition to establish a technical institute finally came true when he established UKB Agrotech, a house of machine research and design in his hometown, “the first of its kind in India.” He got substantial financial help from the Northeastern Development Finance Corporation Ltd. (NEDFI) for this project. “There are 9 people who receive free training at the institute,” he says. Bharali’s ultimate hope is to create even more innovators like him.