Note for the weak hearted
Inventions and discoveries are slowly strangled by red-tape and scientists are reduced to despair
Though there are no official statistics to say how many inventions reach a “take-off” stage, it is certain this number is very low. This is the reason frustrated inventors polish shoes at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar or stage hunger strikes before Mantralaya in Mumbai or doing the rounds of newspaper offices in various cities.
It is not as though inventions by individuals had no government patronage so far. The National Research and Development Corporation bas been giving awards to inventors every year for the past several years.
In the past couple of years, the Department of Science and Technology (DST) has also chipped in – it has created a Rs. 20 crore National Innovation Foundation (NIF), which runs in collaboration with Ahmedabad-based SRISTI, or Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions. SRISTI has been working with grassroots innovators for almost a decade now. DST also has another scheme called Technopreneur Promotion Programme (TePP).
But a tragedy lies cloaked in this superficial gloss. A close look at all these programmes and schemes reveals that giving awards to inventors and innovators is the priority. NRDC gives national awards every year. NIF also has a competition for local innovations and plans to give away awards from this year.
No doubt, awards give due recognition to an achievement, but this should not be the end. This country has had a glorious tradition of forgetting and in many cases, humiliating award winners in various sectors. We have the famous case of an award-winning sportsperson selling vegetables on the road named after him in Asiad Village.
More than awards and other such official recognition, what inventors need is financial and technical support to nurture their little inventions and innovations. The road to commercialization of an invention is long one, and the inventors need someone to do “hand holding” through this journey. They don’t need huge venture capital, as in the case of technology driven ventures. All they need in a micro credit institutional mechanism for small technological innovations and inventions.
Secondly, technical support to Innovators is missing. In order to improvise and make an invention work under different conditions, one needs certain technical inputs. Often, inventors are referred to the nearest scientific establishment, where the entrepreneurs are rejected straight away or sent to another center. There is no framework or infrastructure to deal with demands from outside the formal setup.
Thirdly, there is a bigger question of assessing an invention or an innovation. Is our formal sector qualified to assess the work of a villager or a farmer or a local mechanic ? The mindset of scientists is so conditioned for the formal sector that they try to apply the same criteria to grassroots inventions – which often cannot be compared.
Finally, there is the issue of patenting and pricing. Of late, there has been awareness about patenting, because of high profile cases of need and haldi related patenting. But confusion still prevails about what can be patented and how.
We must remember that all inventions do not become successful commercial products. Technological history is replete with examples of first class scientific innovations that turned out to be disastrous products. General Motor’s rear – engine car and Howard Hughes’ wooden seaplane are just two examples.
Even Albert Einstein has had his share of failures. It’s a little known fact that he designed some maintenance-free refrigerators. He took some 45 patents in six countries for his redesigned fridge, but it evoked no industrial interest because the machine was so complicated and did little more that what an ordinary machine could do.
What India urgently requires is a National Innovation Policy, dealing with issues such as micro credit and linkages between informal and formal sectors of science and technology. The goal should be to develop an environment where innovation is recognized and nurtured at all levels – be it a village field, a mechanic’s shop or a shop floor in a factory.
The Hindustan Times
Science News
May 27, 2001
|
