In a Maharashtra village, school dropouts power MIT experiment

Far from India’s tech hubs —Pune at 80 km, is the closest—Pabal is home to one of six worldwide MIT Fab Labs, or fabrication laboratories that try to build ‘‘everything from anything’’.

Pabal’s Fab Lab is India’s second after Bithoor in Uttar Pradesh. There is one each in Ghana, Norway, Boston (US) and Costa Rica, all part of MIT’s Media Lab tech outreach project.

Manned today by school dropouts and underprivileged children, the Fab Lab is a collection of high-tech tools that can be used to fabricate instruments of any utility and configuration.

MIT first set up a small lab in 1992, at Pabal’s Vigyan Ashram—an organisation that provides vocational and informal education to underprivileged and school dropouts. On March 18 this year, MIT upgraded it to a full-fledged Fab Lab at a cost of $200,000.

‘‘A Fab Lab is like putting a Ford into a garage,’’ says Neil Greshenfeld, director of MIT’s Centre for Bits and Atoms, the man who conceptualised the project.

Pabal’s Fab Lab already had its first beneficiary. ‘‘A local lady got a broken part of her photocopying machine made at the lab. If she had gone to the market to replace it, it would have cost her a lot of money,’’ said Vigyan Ashram’s Yogesh Kulkarni. The Fab Lab’s objective is to take tech to the masses of the developing world to solve local problems. So it comes with computer-controlled fabrication tools, open source computer-aided design and manufacturing software, associated electronic components and test equipment.

At Pabal, the lab has a vinyl cutter, a 3D mini-mill, a laser cutter, a power saw, oscilloscope, scanner, three computers and a host of other electronic and mechanical tools.

‘‘Now, with a full-fledged lab, we will be able to solve any kind of fabrication problems that these people face,’’ said Kulkarni. ‘‘Though these parts are very critical for the business of locals, companies find it economically unviable to repair.’’

Manu Prakash, a research student at MIT’s Centre for Bits and Atoms, explained that Vigyan Ashram was chosen because it used ‘‘innovative techniques’’ and underprivileged students in solving problems of the rural population.

Prakash has been training the ashram students—the ashram has set up 23 internet kiosks across Pabal—using machines and software developed by his colleagues back in the US. ‘‘The focus area of this laboratory will be agriculture instrumentation, sensors and tools using electronic and mechanical technology,’’ Prakash said.

Kulkarni said even with the previous ‘‘miniature lab’’ they created instruments that detected ground water and gadgets that gave advance warning of milk going sour.

Set up in 1982 by the late Shrinath Kalbag, today Vigyan Ashram boasts of turning 800 dropouts into entrepreneurs. ‘‘Even before MIT pitched in with their funds and resources, our technicians invented a 6.5 horse power mini-tractor,’’ Kulkarni said.