Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta, vice chairman of National Innovation Foundation (NIF)
was interviewed by Wall Street Journal. What is most striking about the
professor is his efforts to promote and cross-pollinate grassroots
entrepreneurship's, have resulted in more than 120,000 inventions so far.
* Washing machine-cum-exercising machine, where the act of pedaling the
stationary cycle runs the machine which washes clothes.
* The technology discovered by a groundnut digger from Rajasthan was
bought by an entrepreneur in Visakhapatnam for making a sea-beach cleaner. The
groundnut-digger collects the groundnuts, sieves the soil and keeps the nuts.
Similarly, the sea-beach collects the sand, sieves the debris and moves on.
* The Tatas went to France to get compressed air technology, but Kanak
Gogoi in Guwahati has made a car which runs on compressed air, not fuel, and
costs 0.06 rupees per kilometer .
* They believe that the cycle can only be used for transportation, when
in fact it can be used for spraying pesticide and pumping water! They don't
realize that ! We have innovations where the cycle is used for sprayers, as
well as for generating energy.
* Bamboo windmill for pumping water only for 5,000 rupees.
* A herbal fruit ripener from a Orissa tribal who used to use this leaf
to ripen bananas. We were intrigued because this had never been recorded in
literature. So, we gave this ripener to the top Central Science & Industrial
Research lab in Mysore that is involved in food processing. They found
something remarkable, especially since all the fruit ripening the world over is
done by chemicals. The lab found that the leaf not only ripened the fruit, but
also changed the ratio of reducing to non-reducing sugars.
* We got a herbal drug for typhoid from Jharkhand which we gave to a
virology lab of the Indian Council for Medical Research in Kolkata. The drug
worked in patients otherwise resistant to the best drugs in the market. Now
imagine what that means! It means that a typhoid organism which is becoming
resistant is now being controlled by a herbal drug from Jharkhand.
I recommend you read the complete article
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125376926792036847.html
cheers
