Father of Grassroots Innovation - Prof. Anil K Gupta

Professor Anil Kumar Gupta is a senior faculty at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad one of the best business schools in India. This is not his only identification; but his work shows he has multidimensional personality. He is the executive vice-chairman of NIF (National Innovation Foundation). He is the first person in India who initiated promotion of grass root innovators since 1989. Recently in an interview he speaks about cross-pollination work of grassroots innovations, ideas on globalization, technology commons and his experience with big industries as well as Government, which is published in The Wall Street Journal | India. By his persistent and dedicated work, now more than 120,000 grass root innovations and traditional knowledge practices are documented from all various fields such as agriculture, animal and human medicines, herbal drugs, mechanical devices, rural technologies from the informal and unorganized sector of rural and urban India.

NIF has been established under the Department of Science and technology, Government of India on 28^th February, 2000. The main aim is to provide scouting, documenting and scaling of sustainable innovations and helping innovators of the informal sector to get to market the products through incubation and business development. It helps in protecting Intellectual Property rights of Grass root innovators and documents various innovations and Traditional practices. It also helps in technology transfer of suitable technologies. 57 Technologies have been already licensed. Former President of India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam has been a great supporter and guide to NIF since its inception. and highly appreciates Prof. A.K. Gupta’s efforts. It also holds rural innovation competition where best grass root innovations are awarded. Innovations and medicinal plant database in Multilanguage is maintained by NIF. Similarly, Honeybee network tries to connect whole India and also creates awareness about the importance of grassroots innovations in the development of the Nation. SRISTI and GIAN support NIF in all its activities.

India is really blessed having a son like Prof. Anil K. Gupta. He is a true role model to be followed by the youth of nation. His many ideologies such as respect to traditional practices as well as grass root innovations, belief in sustainable technologies etc match with that of the Father of Nation - Mahatma Gandhi. He works for India but his essence of work has spread globally.