Resource crunch hampers innovation foundation

But beneath all this fanfare,there is an acute shortage of resources,which has hampered the growth,promotion and the successful marketing of these innovations.

NIF was established by the Department of Science and Technology in February 2000 with an annual corpus grant. But with time,the funding has stagnated.

IIM-A Prof Anil K Gupta,vice-chairperson of NIF and president of SRISTI,said: “The funds with NIF have been frozen at Rs 1.6 crore for the last nine years — in the sense that the value went down because of inflation. There is no other organisation in this country where database has gone up and resources gone down by 10 per cent per annum each. It defies logic. Nevertheless,when the head of the state honours these innovators,it does make a statement.”

NIF members first scout for rural,indigenously-designed technologies and collect them after prior informed consent from the innovators (who can withdraw their products from the database any time). Then it refines,incubates,invests,markets,transports and exports the technologies.

Lalmuanzuala Chinzah,national coordinator for NIF’s business development branch,said that 100 per cent of the turnovers from those projects that have taken-off go back to the innovators.

“NIF does not get anything because we are mandated to do so,” Chinzah said.

NIF has sold innovative,grassroots products developed by Indians from across the country to buyers in almost 20 countries across six continents.

In the past two years alone,it has received roughly 700 inquiries for products in its database from more than 60 countries and elsewhere in India. But till date,not one large company has even tried a technology at even a moderate scale.

Prof Gupta admitted that the foundation has not been as successful in spreading the word about these products as it has been in collecting them. He said resource crunch,absence of sustained media coverage and lack of faith by large companies has been an impediment.

“We’ve proved that in the global market you can create a market for grassroots products. If Germany can buy a pacifier from Rajasthan,the US tree climbers and Philippines a manual milking machine and so on,I think the point has been made,” he said.