When would India start encouraging Innovations?
By Suman Ravikumar, SiliconIndia   |   Monday, 13 December 2010, 14:46 IST   |    29 Comments
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When would India start encouraging Innovations?
Bangalore: For centuries the Indian mindset has been about following the West. The 'I' in India always meant Imitation. But now Innovation has become the new mantra for all young Indians. But has the efforts of new innovations really paid off? In fact you could say "No" as only 12 to 14 percent (35) of innovations out of 250 were approved and were given patent. Out of 35, 5 patents were given by the U.S. Government. The U.S. patent office did not charge innovators any patent fee when they heard that the innovations were from people who had no formal training. There are several innovations that happen in the country and go unnoticed. NGOs take initiative of providing the platform for young innovators by nominating the the individual. The individual wins a prize for his prized innovation and he and his revolutionizing innovation is forgotten in the same village where it had originated. Since many of these worthy innovations lie cocooned in their respective villages, hardly any of these breakthrough technologies see the light. Why is that, in India, there is a congenital failure to identify innovation and creativity? Despite the lack of education, power and money, young guns have fought their way with limited resources and found a better and cheaper solution to address our problems, but still government shuts its doors away and discourages budding talents. Around six lakh students graduate from technical institutes every year in our country and why that none of their 'innovative' project works is not considered worthy of a patent? In a government polytechnic college in Latur (in Maharashtra), three young girls have built a black box for automobiles that is used by Insurance companies in U.S. to know if the car was met with a genuine accident or not. How many people in India know about this? Should not such products be developed and sold in a mass scale? One such instance that has been ignored by our government is that of Chandrasekhar Panda and Saswat Swain, the two young minds of the Biju Patnaik University of Technology (BPUT) who have designed the first ever 3G technology-based data card that will provide high speed internet at a very low cost for rural people. The 3G data card, named "iWEBLEAF", has been designed in such a manner that it can work on the spectrum of any telecom operator to provide high speed internet service all the time. They have developed the card in such a way that it is both Wi-Fi and 3G enabled. The data card currently has the capacity of providing 7.2Mbps speed on the 2G GSM SIM card besides providing internet access at 21.1Mbps.It also acts as a Wi-Fi hotspot hub, which will enable the end user to connect around 300 laptops and 30 mobile phones to the internet without using any cable connection. This invention can be a breakthrough in providing mobile broadband connectivity to the people of the state.In India the biggest challenge for the telecom authority of India is to provide broadband in rural villages and remote areas of the country. The goal of the project is to drive a 'highway' of high-speed internet, which would unite 410 rural regions, where private telecom companies do not develop broadband internet infrastructure due to low demand. "By using only 3 to 4 data cards, an entire village with around 150 families can be provided internet connectivity with a net spending of just Rs 900 per month. Similarly, an urban user will get high speed internet at just Rs 99 per month," said Panda. "Using this data card, a person can get to view more than 150 television channels, free of cost without using any television tuner or additional gadgets. The user can also switch to different networks within 2 days." said Panda. Currently the data card is priced at 1300. It can be used by both pre-paid and post-paid customers and the tariff plan that they offer is 274 per month for unlimited download and 99 for 2GB of download. The data card price is expected to reduce to 900 if the State government extends its support. The one disadvantage of the innovation is that, the data card is completely depended on a telecom operator's spectrum and no telecom operator would like its customers switch to different operators so frequently. The young lads are in talks with local operators in State and are hopefully expecting a positive response from them. "Though our Honorable President, Pratibha Patil has extended her support for the project, the State and the Orissa Government have not taken any action towards the R&D setup and budget plan of the innovation." said Panda. There is no acknowledgment from any quarter. These Indian Technical Institutes (ITIs) and polytechnics have mass talent at grassroots level. So, the government needs to look into the development of these institutes if they want to encourage rural ideas and also needs to harness low cost technologies which will help India achieve the stand of a Super power nation.

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