Agenda for mobilizing tech youth for transforming India: six challanges

Agenda for mobilizing tech youth for transforming India: six challanges: There are six challenges which tech youth is facing in reorienting not only its own motivations but also that of the larger society to use the talent and potential of youth far better than India does it today. There is a serious underutilization of this potential by youth and teachers themselves. The collaborative advantage among the disciplines, institutions, sectors and social segments thus is missing.

Challenge one:

Formal-Informal partnership: There is a dire need to bridge the widening distance between the opportunities available for creative communities and individuals in formal and informal sector. While individual innovators in every sector are disadvantaged, their handicaps become several times multiplied when language, remoteness and illiteracy so characteristic of much of the informal sector, further impede the communication between two sectors. Common fabrication facilities must be created in the form of innovation Lab or creativity space where students manage the facility and do the fabrication round the  lock whenever they feel like without any need to take permission from higher ups or facing other administrative constraints.

Engagement with innovators and communities in disadvantage regions: When social tensions and in some cases instances of social violence are tearing the margins of the country apart, it is a very desirable gesture on the part of the students at SVNIT ( and other such campuses) to engage with innovators in formal and informal sector. Benchmarking: measuring current level of  the inertia or inefficiency and hazards( safety issues)  in various  activities of manual or shop floor  workers in different livelihoods/farm and non farm industries is essential.  This can not be just a one time engagement. Solving persistent social problems: The design of the projects on the problems of excluded communities, professions/occupations( say leather workers, stone breakers, coolies, paddy transplanters etc.,) will contribute a great deal in overcoming civilizational inertia of our country, it will also make students feel good about themselves.

Challenge Two:

Collaborative learning: Mobilizing the power of collaborative learning within and between the campuses has not been harnessed enough yet. We still are organized departmentally and think through the problem sectorally rather than more historically or from final user’s perspective. Cross-disciplinarity: Thus creating opportunities for students of different branches to work together formally or informally to solve a problem is one of the major agenda ahead. User-orientation: Which disciplines should be brought together should depend upon the problems to be solved and not constraints of the department or a branch, or guides. Cross-institutional cooperation: Project pursued at one institute does not have much chance of being taken forward at another institute. Relay or kho-kho model is another process through which collaboration can be fostered across institutions. Database of state of art of student projects: Reinforce the spirit of sharing and upload the final year and assignments projects and other content on techpedia.in or other such platforms to make these open source after filing patents if the need be. How else, will originality of students projects be ensured.

Challenge Three:

Linkage with  MSME and public systems:  Identifying the problems in managing environmental effects, material use, waste, energy efficiency, workers safety and productivity, and quality of goods and services in MSME.

Challenge Four:

Investing in student’s ideas and innovations: mobilise small risk capital from alumni and high net-worth individuals to create social venture fund at each campus to invest in the socially useful ideas of students and also of the informal sector innovators. Similarly funds should be available for supporting student led patents with a small equity that can be shared between the Institution and sristi’s Techpedia.in ( say five to seven per cent each, or fees in lieu of that) if its support is needed for getting patent at concessional terms through Honey Bee Network’s list of pro bono IP attorneys all over the country.

Challenge five:  

Extending testing and calibration facilities to innovators without cost if need be or at extremely low cost so that advantage of state of art laboratories and workshops becomes available to informal sector and MSME and also student innovators from ITI and Polytechnics

Challenge six:

Open source content for school children:  each student should develop at least one open source multi media and/or multi language lesson in any subject of any class for school children 

inverted model of innovation: children innovation ignite 12 awards

inverted model of innovation: children innovation ignite 12 

inverted model of innovation: children innovation ignite 12 awards  Posted on Sat, 20 Oct 2012 23:57:19
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	Inverted model of innovation:  IGNITE ‘12 The unprecedented response to the IGNITE competition for children’s innovations by NIF has created new benchmarks of curiosity and creativity of children.  Compared to around 4000 entries last year, this year 14889 children responded from 282 districts of 30 states and union territory. Selecting 32 children was not easy.  Children have once again proved that they are far less patient with the unsolved problems of our society than many of us.  The inverted model of innovation implies that children invent, engineers and designers fabricate and companies commercialize.  The awards will be given by Dr. A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, former President of India on November 10, 2012 at 3 pm at IIMA campus.  Those who want to be inspired so that they can overcome their own inertia would not miss this date.  The rest can enjoy their comfort with inertia, inefficiency and inadequacy in dealing with the social problem.  Each child would also get a copy of   patent application filed in their names apart from seeing the prototype wherever feasible.  The children are always advised not to make feasibility the enemy of desirability.  In addition to the award winners, we intend to invite some children whose ideas were found very interesting even if not worthy of award.  There were other children who had the courage to send absurd ideas.  We intend to invite some of those kids also to attend the programme.  Who knows what seems absurd today may become a reality tomorrow.  Let me share the ideas of youngest children under class eight this week.  The ideas of the children upto class tenth and twelfth will be shared in the coming weeks.  Mohammed Usman Hanif Patel from Jalgaon, Maharashtra, class two thought about a fan inside the house powered by the windmill on the rooftop mechanically.  He also thought about a sorting machine for different sizes of oranges.  Rajshree Choudhary, class five, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand would not let people use mobile phone while driving and has developed an interesting concept for that.  It is a pity that while children are concerned about this bad habit, adults just ignore this basic etiquette of driving.  How many lives would be saved by this innovation by preventing accidents caused by this habit is anybody’s guess.  Shiv Shankar Kumar, class six and Ravi Ranjan class eight from Patna, Bihar would prevent people from driving vehicles without carrying their driving licence.  The system they have designed would not let their car or other vehicle start till the driver’s licence has been acknowledged.  Aditya Joshi, class eight, Pune, Maharashtra  has conceived a spray which will make gloves or socks water proof when needed.  The layer can be peeled off when not needed.  Lakshya Kaura, Naman Jain, Manav Mitra, Utkarsh Hora, Amrit Dang and Sehaj Kataria are extremely concerned that many people meet with an accident while walking or driving with their headphones on because they can’t hear the horn or the sound of other traffic.  They would rather have a device, which will capture frequencies above a limit and thus alert the user of the impending danger.  Charishma, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh has come out with an extremely creative solution to solve the traffic problems.  We have all seen that in the morning and evening different sides of the road have excessive traffic.  If dividers situated in between the road could be moved to left or right depending upon the traffic load on either side of the road, the space utilization and traffic movement can be optimized to a great extent.  The traffic authorities may like to pay attention to this idea and experiment with mobile dividers on the road. Kripesh Swain and Kumar Biswajeet, Bhubaneshwar, Orissa have thought about a very serious problem of our society.  In the flood prone regions, there are times when all the wells and hand pumps are inundated and there is a severe water shortage.  In some places, effort has been made to raise the platform of the hand pump a few feet to address this problem.  The idea suggested by the children is a hand pump that will automatically raise with the onset of flood to ensure drinking water availability.  Even if such a hand pump had to be raised to a higher level manually with some kind of retractable system, it would still be a great relief.  Be ready to read about many more creative ideas in the coming weeks.  We welcome entrepreneurs, designers, fabricators and entrepreneurs to join hands with the Honey Bee Network and NIF so that the inverted model can be implemented fast. Look forward to make our children believe that their job is to imagine and invent, the rest of the steps in the value chain will be taken care of by the country.  Impatient children are the greatest asset of our country.

message to techfest organisers in technology colleges

message to techfest organisers in technology colleges: almost every engineering and other technology educational and research institution organises techfest in which they organise various events. But societal inertia and patience with every day problems continues, i hope that the situation will change, and soon for bettter,