In today’s modern age when technology is changing day by day, when new education policy is about to be implemented, there are still however many new and emerging inventions are being created and developed every day by our young folks. So when talking about India we see two sections of society ‘Rural and Urban’. While urban India is moving ahead with innovations with the required help for the government or those people who are interested in the future, now coming to the rural section we a number of interesting innovations which we sometimes refer to as ‘Jugaad’, but if a particular invention fulfills the purpose then it can be counted an innovation.
So to get a more detailed perception about the way India is performing with respect to innovations and rural study we had our distinguished guest Shri Chetanbhai Patel who has worked his way up to becoming the person he is today.
A webinar was organized on Friday 11th March 2022 with the title ‘Let’s lead children to innovation’ at around 8:00 pm.
Chetan Patel has done his graduations in rural studies and post-graduation in Sociology. For the past 11 years, he is contributing to various growth and developmental activities of SRISTI like SODHYATRA, scouting grassroots innovation, inventions, farm practices, traditional foods, children workshop, summer school, farmers meet, teacher innovations, and many others. Till now, he has visited over 1000 villages of India and conducted workshops in over 2000 schools of India. He is a recipient of the SRISTI Samaan Awards and Best SCOUT awards for his active and valuable contribution.
He is one of the organizing members of SRISTIs SHODHYATRA and actively pursuing the work of scouting and dissemination of innovative and traditional practices among villagers during SHODHYATRA. SHODHYATRA has been recognized as one of the sought-after tours for the exploration of best practices be it traditional or innovative practices in the rural strata. He is pursuing research on SHODHYATRA in association with students of IIM Ahmedabad.
He is also instrumental in the organizing of the Satvik food festival, an annual traditional & organic food festival. A unique platform for small and innovative farmers to sell their farm produces directly to the end consumers.
He is actively involved in the organizing of various award functions of SRISTI like Gandhian Young Technology Innovation awards (GYTI), SRISTI samaan, International Conference on Creativity and Innovations at Grassroots (ICCIG), and others.
He has worked with various developmental organizations in various capacities like UNICEF, ILO, USED, DBIT, IDRC, JDF, DST. He has coordinated one of the initiatives of IIM Ahmedabad called Student Managed Initiative for Learning and Education (SMILE) along with a local corporate WAGH BAKRI and AMC by starting a coaching class for poor children that is currently coaching around 80 students
He is also instrumental in the reinvigoration of village researchers as well as dissemination of the innovative practices among the farmer’s communities of countries like China, Singapore, and Kenya. He was instrumental in transforming three rural technologies for the benefit of the farmer’s community of Kenya
He has played an active role in the establishment of the Innovation club and centers in several states for cross and lateral learning about innovative practices and frugal technologies.
He has delivered a number of motivational lectures in farmers’ meet, schools, colleges, various development organizations, IAS academy, and others. He is credited to have touched and transformed the lives of over 10000 people like farmers, teachers, children, women, nomads, and researchers
Over the years he has learned that not following optimization has led to disasters of many individuals and organizations. He always believed in sharing best optimization practices be it cost-wise, process-wise, or other among the community members. He has set an example for people and communities alike. In his marriage, he may be the first to disseminate by printing 200 traditional practices and over 40 ideas and innovations along with his wedding invitation card. He has organized an exhibition of 25 innovative farmers’ technologies for display during his marriage ceremony.
Chetanbhai first started with the example of a ‘Walker’ used mostly by aged people, explaining that the walkers currently available in the market are fixed in their positions with no scope for adjustment when walking up/down the stairs.
So a student from Patna Bihar, Shalini Kumari developed and came up with an adjustable walker which has also been patented, and on partnering with a company she is also receiving a sum on each walker that is being sold. Next, he talked about a prototype trolley bag by a student Nisha on how we Indians in our day-to-day life feel the need for something like this.
Another student Chaya Thakur of class 7, from Gujarat, came up with an interesting invention wherein the water taps are at the same level for all students. So to counter this she suggested that they should be kept at different heights so that all the students short or tall can access the taps without any difficulty.
Following this is a lorry equipped with a starting and breaking system to ease a vendor’s work. Then we had a revolving fridge innovation by Sartak Shukla.
Today with more wore work being done on a chair we are facing the problem of posture defect and back pain, so to counter this we have a chair that is meant to straighten our backs and make an upright posture. to develop this it has taken the efforts of Kulrun Rizvi from U.P.
The parents present during the webinar were questioned by the guest as to their role till now in the development of their child, also whether or not they are encouraging their children to be innovators. Following this, a few questions were asked by Chetanbhai to the parents. Two enthusiastic students also shared their thoughts and questions with the guest.
Towards the end of the session, it was concluded that today’s children are tomorrow’s future and it is in our hands to see that they become better versions of themselves. After this, the session was concluded.
YouTube link: https://youtu.be/98EwV9Iwn7s
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