Good ideas are common, what's uncommon are people who can work hard enough to bring them about. The real life stories of the innovation as displayed in the India Unlimited series are of those people who have not just that one big idea but have actually gone ahead and made it come true. In the same spirit of such inspired innovations Sam Pitroda, the man at the helm of affairs at the National Innovation Council promises to not just come up with a path breaking idea for change but also catalyze its implementation.
In his own words, Sam Pitroda, Chairman of the National Innovation Council (NIC) says, "Services will be delivered to your doorstep and you won't have to bribe somebody, you wont have to wait in line and essentially government interface with citizen would be automated which is a big hassle right now for poor people, you know for example how do you get your pension? If you don't get your pension where do you go? Who do you talk to? It pretty confusing, now you can go on internet, you can complain, you can do all kinds of things. This is really about creating government of tomorrow. To me democratization of information is a big big challenge"
The question that I am trying to impose is that why has this country learned to live with problem unsolved for so long? So recently with the help of young boy, a young man, Sristi created a portal called as techpedia.in. Techpedia.in has something that no where in the world you will find, for example if you want to know the engineering project done by Amity students and Stanford student you cant find them at one place but in India you can find hundred thousand projects, more than hundred thousand projects done by three hundred and fifty thousand students at one platform, what does it mean, it means first of all the students will not be able to do what has been done before, so originating question will go up, even the innovation question will go up then we have pose the problems of informal sector and micro & small medium enterprises, these problems will be addressed by the students and students idea will go to the industry, so this linkage which was missing between the formal sector, young technological sector of the country, you know India is a very young country, more than 50% of the people are less than 35 years. These young people, they are not being challenged, they are not being involved, they are not being provoked to work for the innovations, for the problem of poor. So we are trying to link, make this bridge also between the students and the Informal sector" said Anil Gupta, Member of NIC and also founder of the National Innovation Foundation.
But, how can young creative minds be involved in the development process, how can industry or government make use of the bright talented young population, how can every Indian become a stakeholder in India's development story, we need to find ways and means of doing that.The cost strategy of using innovation to bring about inclusive growth is to eliminate disparity to bring in people from the fringes to the main stream. To that effect the National Innovation council we'll encourage innovations for inclusions in the bottom of the pyramid through the exercise of awareness, excess, affordability, availability, scalability, sustainability, quality, pervasive growth and Innovations for & by people.
Arun Maira said, "We are clear that there are some very basic things that people in our country just do not have which is why they are not able to participate on their own feet in the growth of the economy, I mentioned them some earlier when I talked about why peacocks are pigeons come first rather than sparrows, I mean those who have education are more easily able to participate in the economy, those who have good health naturally, I mean you need to be healthy to be alive and to so so. Basically our people in the country don't have education, many of them have good education, access to good health, clean water, sanitation, So we need innovations that will provide such things to people very quickly at low cost, very accessible."
For innovative ideas to be practical and effective in India, they need to be low cost, accessible and sustainable, Ideas which can be replicated through the length and breadth of the country and address major issues of health, education and employment, More on that after the short break.
According to Anil Gupta, "There is a huge potential what an IC can do, since the last meeting for example I made some of two or three proposals. I said about four crore travel by train everyday, everyday. Imagine if the long distance train and this idea I got from a student in IIT Bombay, In a workshop I had he raised this point, everybody who buys the ticket for the lost distance journey also registers for a curse, on the way for two days, one and a half day, one day you can complete a course, that means the whole country will skill it, re skill itself, continuous learning, life-long learning, one course after another course after another course. If the whole country try to pursue ideas, seek knowledge, surely their expectations from themselves and from others will go up and the society will find a tremendous energy for making progress."
To usher in the new also means to bidding farewell to the old, to bring in new message and new thought processes in the way that we want our government, our institutions and systems. But how easy or difficult will it be to change old mind sets and negate set rooms. How difficult will it be turn a new leaf.
"I am sure there will be vested interest, I am sure there will be some fights, I am sure people would say all this is not the thing to do, not right now, we will wait for three years but our job is to drive this and get it done. I see this is as a great window of opportunity, ten years ago it was too early, ten years from now it will be too late" said Sam.
Long standing difficult problems like water pollution being solved with simple ideas like the one you just saw. It is now upto our leaders to encourage such individuals who wish to make a difference.The National Innovation Council has got on both thought leaders from multidiscipline, each of them over achievers in their own individual field. Sam Pitroda is accompanied by Arun Maira, Dr. Kasturirangan, Dr. Ramesh Mashelkar, Kiran Karnik, Dr. Devi Shetty, R Gopalakrishnan, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Shekhar Kapur, Saurabh Srivastava, Dr. Anil Gupta and Dr. Sujatha Ramadorai among many others.
Sam added: "Everybody is involved, I mean this is a task no one man can do, u know. I mean we have all kinds of experts involved, Nandini is doing UID, Dr. Kasturirangan would be doing KIS, Dr. Chidambaram is already doing NKN, your very large group at NIC, thousands of software people, tens of thousands doing applications, department to telecom, BSNL, MTNL, Airtel's of the world, all have private public fiber optics, so we will be using that fiber optics, we don't lay all of the fiber again then you have private software companies then you have private contractors laying towers and all that then you have department of IT, Rural Ministry, Panchayat Ministry, Education Ministry, Health, Science & Technology, you got everybody in it and everyone has a stake in it."
Arun Maira added: Innovations as in the west they describe innovations as we know the an I-pod is a great innovation then an I-pad is a greater innovation and then you know I am lost, I mean I don't even know how to use I-pod which I had and to know what the I-pad is I got one and to do that, but those are innovations for people already have something and you try to tempt them with something even better and the company who produce those things are called great innovators by the way, Apple is considered the greatest innovator if a firm, but those are not the innovations we need, we need something much more basic, simple but the innovation we need is the model of producing these things and delivering these things so it's not so much the technology as the model of accessing, the organization model, the business model of making these things available at low cost across, so low cost eye care, low cost health care, low cost heart surgeries, low cost education, there are examples as I said in this country.
On one hand they are telling examples of human hope and creativity, on the other issues of employment, health, education and security. Can creative thinking and innovation help us tide over these challenges? Can people like Sam Pitroda make a difference in India's growth trajectory and help bring about sustained social and economic growth. We rest in hope.
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