Grassroots Innovation Pilot Project 1st visit in Kashmir
The SIC Rural Innovation team visited the villages of Kashmir and interacted with Grassrootss innovators as part of Project: GRIPP (Grassroots Innovation Pilot Project) from October 21st to October 23rd. The Gujarat Grassrootss Innovation Augmentation Network GIAN team, led by Professor Anil Gupta, facilitated this. Professor Uday Desai has also joined our visit team.
During our visit, we met more than 20 Grassrootss innovators in Baramulla and Anantnag villages of Srinagar. We had one-on-one interactions with Grassrootss innovators in Anantnag village, where they presented us their innovations. The innovations seemed to be creative, impactful and effective in solving problems. Most of the innovations, such as Spade cum Hoe, Fruit Plucking Device, Weed remover, Mixture of manure and grinder, Apple Grading Device, were related to agriculture and horticulture activities. The innovator also exhibited other innovations, such as foldable cylinder carriers, which can be very useful in carrying gas cylinders without manual lifting. Whereas there were few innovations that could solve local problems, such as the Snow Clearing Machine, which assists in clearing snow in such cold and hilly regions.
Interacting with Grassrootss innovators was the highlight of our trip. They all seemed to be very confident in themselves. They were able to clearly describe the technology behind their innovation to us, and we were astounded to discover such scalable frugal innovations in Srinagar's rural areas.
SIC team will visit and meet with more Grassrootss innovators in the coming days in order to create scalable frugal innovations using the technology and human resources of Indian and Japanese academics and industries.
