|
Rediscovering Rural India.
 Eighty
per cent of India may live in its villages, but there’s only one per cent
that cares about them. Professor Anil Gupta, who is attached to the Centre
for Management in Agriculture at IIM, Ahmedabad, is part of that small
minority. Gupta, who hails from Buland Shahar in Uttar Pradesh, says he
always questioned the urban neglect of rural India, perhaps because of
his family’s inclination for social service.
A PhD in Commerce and management
from Kurukshetra University in Haryana, he did research on the subject
in 1985-86. But soon the realisation struck him that all his research
was in English, the language of global communication but one that alienated
him from the very source of his research — illiterate rural folk who would
never know the fruits of his labour. This rankled and he founded the Honeybee
network, which enabled rural inventors in different parts of the country
to get in touch with one another. Though the HoneyBee Periodical is in
English, it has regional language editions in ‘Tamil, Telugu, Kannada,
Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi and Bhutanese.
Winning the prestigious international
PEW Conservation Scholar award instituted by the University of Michigan
in 1993 proved to be the turning point. The award, which brought Rs 45
lakh, was utilised for setting up a non-governmental organisation called
Society for Research and Initiative
for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI).
The NGO later received funding
from IDRC, Canada, Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Macarthus
Foundation, WWF and Gothenburg University.
The considerable resources
that SRISTI has generated has enabled it to network with rural innovators
in 71 countries.
Gupta, a man brimming with
confidence in the rightness of his cause, says he is not afraid of the
WTO and IPR regimes. Unlike Indian industry, which is running scared,
he has quietly worked towards registering patent rights of rural innovators.
Among the inventions are a three-wheeled tractor, an innovative pulley,
a cotton thresher and a disease-proof variety of groundnuts. "If you are
alert and knowledgeable, WTO and IPR are your greatest allies," he says
with a confident smile. But the man who has taken modern management to
the study of entrepreneurship and technological innovation to rural India
says he has much more to do.
The search for more rural
innovators through his regular shodh yatras continues. Because, as he
points out, unschooled rural folks are not deadweight on the nation’s
economy but a vital force which if harnessed can power India to superpower
status in five years.
Related
links:
SRISTI
UnescoWorld
Professor
Anil Gupta
|
