Times of India, Vijaysinh Parmar, 13 Aug 2008,
AHMEDABAD: When Mansukh Jagani, farmer from Amreli district invented 'Bullet Santi' in early '90s, he didn't know he was sparking a revolution of sorts. Bullet Santi is basically a motorcycle-driven multipurpose farm machine. His innovation inspired many others to follow suit and has led to formation of a club in Gujarat called Technology Commons. The club will comprise innovator and those who improvize the technology. They will critically analyze and improve on each other's models. Such an initiative is being taken for the first time in the country and the institution behind it is National Innovation Foundation. "In May, we organized a meeting of innovators in Rajkot and the idea of setting up this club emerged," said Anil Gupta, executive vice-chairman of NIF and faculty member of Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A ). There would be no restrictions on club members learning from each other, but if a company wants to use their technology , it would have to get a licence, he added. Licensing would require consent from the lead innovator and all those who made improvements. Jagani fabricated an attachment so that a farm machine could be powered by an Enfield Bullet motorcycle. The innovation was patented by Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN) in US as well as India. "The idea was to have the flexibility of using a motorcycle for farming. Several fabricators in Saurashtra and Kutch found this a very attractive idea,'' says Riya Sinha, who has done a case study on motorcycle-based ploughing machines. She is president of SRISTI Innovations and senior advisor of newsletter 'Honey Bee' that documents grassroots innovations. There are at least 50 motorcycle-driven farm machine fabricators in Saurashtra alone, and more than 8,000 farmers using such machines.
SETTING STANDARDS Technology Commons will bring in standardization in grassroots innovations which is the best thing that could happen, saysProfessor Gupta. "It will make innovations competitive and cost-effective . And, offer affordable solutions to the expanding market. It raises the interesting possibility of combining customization (so necessary for farm machinery) with standardization," he added. NIF encourages people to imitate and build on each other's designs. The only precondition is that each innovator making derivative changes will put the improvements in the Technology Commons database.
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