Recently, Sumathi pointed the SpicyIP team to this article in the Wall Street Journal about Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta and I grabbed the chance to post about him before anyone else could. I first heard about Prof. Gupta last year, when as a member of the Editorial Board for a Journal published by my University, we began to look for diverse influences in the sphere of Intellectual Property to be on our Advisory Panel.
Prof. Anil Kumar Gupta in my mind, is exactly that sort of person. Having read about his work, it absolutely amazes me to see grassroot innovation being supported in a large scale manner.
The interview in the Wall Street Journal is an insight into the work that Prof. Gupta and his teams at the National Innovation Foundation and the Honey Bee Network do. They hope to promote and “cross pollinate grassroot entrepreneurship” and that effort has resulted in 120,000 inventions/ innovations thus far.
The interview touches upon various interesting issues that Prof. Gupta and his team have obviously had to encounter. Whether it be the need to credit research, the concept of “technology commons” or even homogenization vis-a-vis globalization, the interview gives the reader a lot of food for thought.
My interest in the article apart from truly understanding how the cross-pollination of innovation works, lay in Prof. Gupta’s experiences with the Indian Government and Indian companies and their complete lack of interest/ indifference in using indigenous innovations.
Prof. Gupta narrates various instances of a prestigious Automobile Company, Ministries of the Government and even NGOs all of whom have either ignored and/or failed to respond to and/or shown no initiative to change their ways to adopt grassroot innovations. This would lead us to believe that either they were averse to change or did not trust inexpensive indigenously developed inventions in their industries.
This actually would tie into an article Shamnad had sent me a month or so ago. Low cost laptops manufactured by an Indian were licensed to be sold in Malaysia and Brazil, all because (as the inventor put it), “Indians have a record of not trusting Indian Technologies.”
Shamnad in the same context, had also mentioned a saying in Malayalam “Mutthate mullake vassanai illai” (The jasmine at home has no smell).
I think in this background, it is necessary for us to take a step back and acknowledge that Indians are wary of using Indian technology and domestic goods, worrying as to their “quality” or efficacy when compared to internationally produced goods or inventions. However, with the effort of people like Prof. Gupta, his foundation and network of Honey Bees(!) maybe we will not be so cynical and, sooner rather than later, recognise the true potential of the flowers that grow in our garden.
Very true… Indians fail to recognise our own jasmines