Rural Innovations that Showed Light to Others

All creative people want to do the unexpected, and having unique, inventive creative thoughts can often end up as an invention or a discovery. As the famous saying goes ‘Necessity is the mother of Invention’, several studies say that majority of the significant inventions originated from the rural areas mostly because of the fight for survival. Anil Gupta, Founder of the National Innovation Foundation (India) and a senior professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (IIM-A) visited rural villages of India for almost two decades in search of all the outstanding inventions and recorded over 25,000 inventions that needs official recognition. Innovations in rural development is often left out as it is not known outside the village. However, low cost innovations often create an impact within and deserves the full attention to create a buzz outside.

It is said that 68 percent of the Indian population lives in rural areas, and the conditions are not sufficient enough to lead a proper healthy life. In such drastic and helpless situations, people with their creative mind come up with mind-blowing machines or devices created out of materials or facilities they currently have in possession. In a huge country like India, it’s not practical to provide facilities to each and every village in India, but centres across India can definitely work accordingly to bring forward such creative ideas or inventions. Check out these finest, yet effective innovations that make you wonder how smart and intelligent rural people in India are.

1. Solar Mosquito Destroyer

Being well aware of the mosquito threat that’s going on in and around the rubber plantations in Kottayam, Mathews K Mathews, who stays nearby developed a cost-effective machine that instantly kills the mosquitoes. According to National Innovation Foundation, the much efficient device uses the smell from septic tanks to attract the mosquitoes and traps them inside and this direct exposure of sunlight produces a huge amount of heat inside the device and kills the mosquitoes. However, major disadvantage of this machine, is that it is ineffective at night. With the huge popularity, Mathews is now developing a similar fly catching device.