Kids can show us how to innovate
The National Innovation Foundation started by Prof Anil Gupta has invited original technological ideas and innovations from school students.
This time of the year in Delhi is usually seminar and conference time and innovation seems to be the flavour of the current season. Industry chambers, management associations and sundry government departments are all going gung ho about innovation.
The new found interest is understandable, given the fact that the government is loosening purse strings to promote innovation. However, Delhi seminarists appear to be blissfully cut off from ground realities of innovators.
Far from the heat of Delhi seminars, Prof Anil Gupta has been experimenting with various models of innovation in the quiet environs of IIM Ahmedabad for a long time. He staunchly believes that innovation is need- based and is driven by ordinary people - villagers, farmers, roadside mechanics, housewives and children. Over the years, his efforts have successfully brought to the market many grassroots innovations. Now he is focusing on children.
Through a unique national competition called Ignite, the National Innovation Foundation started by him invited original technological ideas and innovations from school students. Over 4100 entries came from all over India, of which a handful have been selected. The idea of this exercise is not just to give awards and send kids back. It is, what Gupta calls, 'inverted model of innovation' in which children ideate, engineers build prototypes and companies commercialise them.
Just look at some of the Ignite ideas, converted into prototypes that were on display at IIM-A last week.
Very often two-wheeler riders don't wear helmets, which is a basic road safety measure. Three girls from the Government Girls High School, Tiruvarur (Tamil Nadu) thought why not have a helmet which is somehow connected to ignition. In effect, this would mean that until the rider wears a helmet, the two-wheeler won't start. Another school girl, Dhavala from Udupi conceived a bed-sheet squeezer to free mothers from the drudgery of squeezing water out of bedsheets and jeans after a wash. The growing incidences of molestation in Delhi prompted Manu Chopra of G D Goenka School to come up with an idea of an antimolestation wrist band to ward off strangers. Four kids from different parts of the country have independently suggested a sensor-based system to prevent drunken people from driving cars. Vignesh, Manoj Kumar and Raghav Simhan from Chennai have developed a prototype of a navigation system for the blind, while Mohit Singh from Sidhi (MP) has developed a medicine box with a reminder facility.
Shalini Kumari from Patna used to see older people struggle with their walkers while climbing stairs because walkers are not flexible. She conceived a walker with spring-loaded self-locking front legs so that when the user pushes his or her front legs on upper stairs and rear legs rest on lower stairs, the walker remains stable.
We have a lot to learn from children, says Gupta. Children are far less patient with unsolved problems than us. We face several problems in day to day life, but instead of trying to solve them we learn to live with them. Kids have the ability to connect various unconnected solutions and come up with something new. They are also more empathetic. They come up with ideas to make life of the elderly or women better. Gupta says creative ideas are coming out of small towns and not metros. Yet the thrust of public policies is on providing facilities and support to people in bigger institutions. Food for thought for another seminar!
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Third Pole environment cools China-Tibet heat
It was a rare occasion to hear representatives of China as well as the Dharamshalabased Central Tibetan Administration speak from the same platform and without any acrimony. What united the two was the environmental situation in the Tibetan Plateau, often referred to as the Third Pole. "The atmospheric environment in the Tibetan Plateau is still very clean, both in remote and urban areas" said Dr Schichang Kang, a scientist from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Although traces of heavy metals and persistent chemicals are found in both air and water samples in the plateau, their range is still within permissible limits set by the WHO, Kang pointed out at a meeting organised by the Foundation for Non- Violent Alternatives in the capital. Tenzin Norbu, head of environment and development desk in the Tibetan government, talked about the threat posed by degradation of permafrost or frozen soils of the plateau. It has a vast expanse of permafrost, which is sensitive to climate change and is particularly vulnerable to warming temperature. Human intervention are affecting the permafrost soil, which in turn threatens biodiversity and aquifers that recharge some of Asia's mighty rivers.
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Climate panel warnings come with a note of caution
In the run up to the climate talks at Durban, the IPCC has issued a new report focused on extreme weather events.
The policy makers' summary, released after approval by all member states, is very cautiously worded and refrains from making unqualified statements. Clearly, the organisation does not want a repeat of the blunder it had committed about melting of Himlayan glaciers in its controversial report prior to the Copenhagen summit. The report, however, is clear about the role of increasing greenhouse emissions.
'There is evidence that some extremes have changed as a result of anthropogenic (man-made) influences, including increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases', it says.
This is in line with other reports which also point to huge spikes in emissions. Data released by the US Department of Energy this month has shown that carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels made their biggest ever annual jump in 2010. China led the way with a spike of 212 million metric tons of carbon in 2010 over 2009, compared to 59 million metric tons more from the US and 48 million metric tons more from India in the same period.
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Nutrition an 'orphan child' for govt
The economic growth in India hasn't led to a corresponding reduction in childhood undernutrition. This has set alarm bells ringing among public health experts. As per official data, 40 per cent of children under 5 are underweight, just a marginal improvement from 1998- 89. At this rate, India will reach the millennium development goal of halving the proportion of underweight children only in 2043. China has already met its goal and Brazil is expected to do so by 2015. This has been highlighted in an analysis published in British Medical Journal this month.
Agricultural growth in India does not seem to have impacted infant undernutrition. "We don't know why this is the case. It could be that agricultural investments are focused in the wrong regions or on the wrong crops and animals or on the wrong size of farm", Lawrence Haddad, notes in his analysis. Several other factors like women's power in decision making, clean water and sanitation and access to affordable health services need to be addressed.
One of the ways suggested is conditional cash transfers for the poor. However, these are unlikely to improve nutrition unless food prices are contained, supply is assured and education on nutrition is geared up to ensure that money meant for food is not used for other needs, pointed out Dr K Srinath Reddy, President, Public Health Foundation of India, in an editorial in the same issue of the journal.
India needs a national nutrition strategy. Nutrition, he says, has been an 'orphan child' - jurisdictionally claimed by many government departments but operationally owned by none.