Some bravehearts were on the dais the other day with their inspiring stories, struggles and sagas. SHAlINI SAKSENA presents some of these game changers
Crop of a beautiful mind
Meet 55-year-old Uddhab Bharali fromshali lakhimpur, Assam, who has the unique distinction of developing more than 85 devices for Agriculture. Not only this, he has to his credit over 105 innovations, 53 of them being registered with National Innovation Foundation. Out of these, 13 have been commercialised.
Bharali set up a research workshop to help local communities and industries solve their technological needs in his hometown of North lakhimpur on the banks of the river Brahmaputra. He started to design machines and devices that would help small-scale farmers to increase their productivity and earnings. Many of his innovations are popular abroad as well.
He has been acknowledged for his unique forte and advises agencies like the Central Silk Board, the North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project and other Institutions across India. He believes in sharing his innovative experiences and has technically trained over 50 youth from rural areas, who are impacting agrarian communities.
“My focus is to help the physically challenged people in my area by providing them with shelter. Most of my innovations are for these people. You don’t understand the problems, especially disabled women face when it comes to hygiene,” Bharali says. For years people used to call him faltu. Those were the days when he had taken innovation as a profession and didn’t have much to showcase to the world. He didn’t have money and was paying a loan of Rs 20 lakh.
In 2001, he moved to Guwahati. That night, he didn’t even have money for a hotel room and had slept at the railway station. He knew he had to make that was cheap and easy to use. It was in 2006 when his simple idea of how to de-seed pomegranate came to him. All one had to do was slice it horizontally and pierce a knitting needle into it. Then beat one-half of the fruit gently on the side of the bowl for the seeds to pop out. “An international channel showcased this simple technique I had taught the locals and I was no longerfaltu,” Bharali recalls.
Over the years, he has won several awards. He is the proud recipient of President’s Grassroots Innovation Award, 2009. In 2007, he got Shristi Samman Award. He is the winner of the Engineering Design Contest organized by NASA Tech Create the Future Design Contest for 2012 and 2013.
He has set up the only centre in India for machine design and research. Through this, he gets assignments from all over the country and whatever he earns from here is spent on helping the poor. “My ideas for invention come from the need of the people I see. Once I saw a man with no legs, walking on his knees. I decided to buy him a pair of floaters and asked him to wear them uulta,” explains Bharali who has recently been entrusted to look after a one-year-old baby with no hands.
“Her parents are poor and can’t look after her, so they left her with me. I teach her how to eat and survive on her own and take care of herself. I want to teach her life skills and live a dignified life,” Bharali says.
His latest research is in trying to find ways and cheap machines that farmers can use to harvest their crops and increase their earnings. “I want farmers to gain confidence and proudly say that they are the ones who are feeding the nation," he tells you.
Today, Bharali is a satisfied man. He has his inventions and his work with the disabled. He wants young innovators to pick up real problems and find solutions. “Don’t get caught up in the glamour. Innovation should not just be on paper. Every innovation should have at least three end users,” Bharali opines.
Driver of change
S Murugan, is no ordinary auto driver from Kochi, Kerala. He ferries the injured, incapacitated and needy for free. Belonging to a poor family in Chengotta district in Tamil Nadu, his parents migrated to Idukki district in Kerala in search of work. They eked out a living as plantation labourers and could not afford to educate their son. Being brought up in abject poverty, he spent his childhood doing odd jobs to supplement the family income. But he studied alongside and completed his Secondary exams through the Open School System. Then he learnt auto driving.
Nothing extraordinary here, except that Murugan has been ferrying and rescuing the poor, sick and mentally challenged from the streets and taking them to hospitals, shelters and old age homes, since 2002.
“For 19 years, I have been on the streets working with leprosy patients, beggars, child labourers and old people. I have rescued over 10,000 people from the streets. It has not been easy but I get a lot of satisfaction when I am able to help someone in need,” Murugan tells you.
This satisfaction comes at a very heavy cost. Murugan lives in a State where the society is divided on the basis of religion. He tells you that his problem is that sourcing money to help these people is tough because people are not in favour of supporting a cause where the caste of the person rescued is under the scanner.
“I want people to understand that we are all Indians first. But people here don’t understand this. They look at me and my cause with suspicion. They don’t understand why I am doing this. They are busy in petty things. But this doesn’t deter me,” he tells you.
Murugan drives the auto at night and earns around Rs 700-Rs 1,000 a night. This money is not for his family — a wife and small child — but for the people he rescues. “Many people need medical attention. But even in Government hospitals, one needs money to get the tests blood tests, X-Ray and MRIs done. Private hospitals don't entertain unless you pay. Most times, the people rescued need immediate medical attention. I can’t afford to stand in the line for hours so taking them to a private hospital is the only option and this requires money. There have been times when I want to do more but can’t due to lack of funds,” Murugan who has received a Rs 1 lakh prize money from JSPl Foundation and conferred the Rashtriya Swayamsiddh Samman, says.
This money will not go to his family. It will go in feeding and treatment of over 200 mentally challenged elderly in his shelter.
His wife, an MBA, does freelance work and earns enough to feed the family. “We don’t have very big dreams, nor are we very ambitious. We are happy in what we have. Ours is a love marriage and she understands what I am doing is a priority and what I earn will go in their care,” Murugan tells you.
Since he doesn’t get much donation — only around Rs 7,000 to Rs 10,000, Murugan looks for other ways to raise money. He goes door-to-door asking people if they will give him old newspapers. He then sells them to raise funds. There are some people who give rice. This helps him feed the people in his bed-shelter. He understands why people donate to already cash-flush NGOs but not him. “It could be that I am not so educated, can’t express myself and don’t dress fancily,” he surmises.
He hopes that this award will help get the credibility for more people to come forward and donate. “Being honoured feels great. It will make me work harder to help people in the streets. If more people come forward and donate, I can help more,” says Murugan, talking about his mobile bath van and a mobile clinic.
The layered genius
He wanted to be a doctor and even got through the pre-medical test but then he realised that most people were falling ill because of the kind of food they were eating. That is when he decided to give up being a doctor and started multi-layer farming on three acres of land. Meet 29-year-old Akash Chaurasia, a resident of Tilli village in the Jalna district of Madhya Pradesh.
His family used to eke a living by selling betel leaf and insisted that he become a doctor but Chaurasia had found his calling — to be the voice for growing safer crop yields through organic farming. He developed a unique four-layer farming technique where four different crops could be sown on the same piece of land by harnessing the sub-soil, top soil and using climbers and creepers for variety in layering.
Chaurasia began his project with just three acres of land. But today, he has brought 18,000 acres under organic farming cross India.
“I used to work for 20 hours. I wanted people in my village to see that multi-layer farming was doable. Of course, it was not possible for me to produce yield for the entire country. So we decided to take this project all over the country and teach farmers our technique,” Chaurasia tells you.
The farmers were taught how they should grow one crop underground, one on the ground, one on the shed constructed and use the space left in between rows for another crop.
“For example, we tell the farmer to grow ginger (underground), it takes three months for its plant to come up. Meanwhile, he can grow spinach. This has several benefits. No weeds grow and water evaporation is minimal. The farmer then builds a shed at a cost of Rs 1 lakh and lasts for five years. The shed is made of bamboo and grass. This prevents the crop below from getting damaged due to hailstones, there is little water loss, the crop is protected from intense sunlight and one can also use it to grow creeper veggies like lauki, bitter gourd, pumpkin, etc. For the fourth crop, we tell the farmer to grow papaya. This is a straight fruit tree with the fruit that grows at the top causing no hindrance to the crops below. By using the same resources, a farmer can optimise the use of his land and earn four times,” Chaurasia explains.
In other words, if a farmer earns Rs 1 lakh from one crop in an acre in a year, by using this technique, which has been endorsed by Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Sagar, the earning can go up to Rs 8 lakh a year.
Chaurasia is involved in training 7,500 youth interested in farming. These people are doing farming like one would a manufacturing industry. “I travel all over the country teaching farmers this technique for which there is no charge. My earning from multi-layered farming, selling betel leaves and organic manure today stands at Rs 18 lakh per annum. This is enough for our family,” Chaurasia says whose personal land holding still stands at three acres.
This one is for unsung citizens of india
It all began when Vikash Das was on a vacation in his home State of Odisha during Durga Puja. He was then working as an IT Security Analyst at IBM Corp. This festival is huge in the State but unfortunately ,tribals were not allowed inside the temple as they were from the lower caste and economically weak.
“I didn’t know the reason why tribal women were not allowed in the temple and wanted an explanation. The answer smacked of lack of awareness and education among the tribals. They were so isolated from the rest of the country that they didn’t even know some of the sops that the Government has for them,” Das says.
Those who did manage to find some connect with mainstream society were ill-treated and exploited. The products that tribal women made were bought at cheap rates and sold in the open market for higher value by the middlemen and money lenders.
It took him two months of research. He spent time in these villages trying to understand the social norms. It was tough for a city born-and-bred man to find his feet. There were no roads, wading through small water bodies to reach remote tribal villages and crossing dense forest was challenging but exciting since it led Das where he is today — a budding social entrepreneur, known for his innovations in democratising the rural non-farming sector and building sustainable impact enterprises.
language was another problem, Das spoke Odiya and tribals have many languages, the probable solution lay in talking to tribal women through their representatives or village elders. “Here, too, there were problems. The women were not allowed to speak to outsiders. Village men took time to allow me to speak to the women directly. They slowly understood that I was trying to better their present situation,” Das says.
Das knew that to give the tribals a solution was not what he wanted. “The villagers knew what their problems were. The only challenge was to make them part of the solution. We encouraged them to come up with ideas that would help them. This way they would take ownership of whatever was happening,” Das shares.
Some of the common problems that these tribals face is destruction due to the cyclones that are common in the State. “Natural calamities are part and parcel of life in Odisha; they hit the State every few years. Sometimes there is a drought, sometimes floods. Tribals are hunters and food gatherers. Calamities affect their source of food. Women do all the work while men spend time drinking,” Das tells you.
His task was to first eliminate the middlemen and money lenders exploiting these tribals. Das connected these women with banks, SME Assistance Guarantee Scheme (SAGS) and other financial institutions. The second step was to ensure that the women were taught how to manage their finances.
Though he believes that the tribals have a rich heritage and culture that should not be tampered with, he also feels that they are citizens of India too and hence their rights need to be protected. “Traditions and modernity can go hand-in-hand. Otherwise, others will take advantage of you. Hence, every product that these women make, the tribal essence is never lost; you will find a tribal flavour in each item,” Das says.
He tells you that these people are so unaware that they still believe that India is ruled by the British. “They didn’t know that we have been Independent for decades,” Das says.
The effort is for bettering the lives of these people. “They are people too and have a right to better not only their lives but their children’s as well. If by making them part of the solution they can achieve this, where is the harmIJ” Das questions, pointing out how we promote their art, culture and heritage.
“Through these products the mainstream society is also learning the richness of our country. We are a link between them and the rest of India. We help them sell what they make — shawls and other trinkets that are indigenous to them. We provide women with vocational training and help them to supplement their income,” Das says.
Three-and-a-half-years later, Das’ work has finally yielded results and he proudly tells you that one of the tribal women who was not allowed to enter the temple because of her caste, is a small-time entrepreneur. “She employees 25 women from her village today. There can’t be a better example of women and community empowerment,” Das tells you.