NIF planning to provide identification for Country-brewed liquor

Country-brewed liquor from one region of India may soon be available across the country. The Ahmadabad-based National Innovation Foundation (NIF), chaired by former Director-General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) R A Mashalkar and vice-chaired by IIM-A Professor Anil K Gupta, has begun collecting information and samples of locally brewed liquor from the farthest corners of India.

Dr Vipin Kumar, NIF’s National Coordinator (Value Addition, Research and Development), said about 40 types of country-brewed liquor from the North-East, the Leh region in Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh have been identified by the NIF. The liquor samples will be sent to laboratories to test the nutrients they contain and how natural chemicals used to make them react with each other. From the test results, five types of liquor will be taken up for quality control to make sure they are safely mass-produced and sold through interested companies or distributors.

The NIF has had two experiences with traditional formulations - a cactus fruit drink from Jesdan in Rajkot; and a method of organically ripening bananas by a tribal man in Angul in Orissa. The cactus fruit drink was analyzed by the Central Food Technological and Research Institute (CFTRI) in Mysore and the results showed high contents of calcium, iron and vitamin C. The NIF has now filed a patent for the drink in the collective name of the village. The herbal banana ripener developed by Budhadeba Sahu of Angul was also validated by CFTRI. In terms of total and reducing sugars, the test found Sahu's formulation superior to commercial methods of ripening using chemicals and various other organic methods.

Prof S M Naik from IIT-Delhi's Centre for Rural Development and Technology is now further working on Sahu's formulation. Kumar said he came up with the idea for the current project after tasting a local brew near the Assam-Nagaland border. "I was sceptical at first, but it was the best drink I've ever had," Kumar said.

As of now, the National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI), Nagpur, will establish the scientific validation about the nutrient contents of the brews. Later, other laboratories will also be contacted to make the tests full-fledged and comprehensive.

All the country-brewed liquor so far identified is organically brewed (meaning they have least likelihood of being poisonous) and some do not even contain yeast as local herbs are used for fermentation. Details of the formulations and the brewing methods are still confidential, as patents are yet to be filed, but they range from local fruits, tree barks to certain leaves. NIF will follow the same process of developing and marketing liquor as it has for other innovations. Patents will be filed for the individuals or communities who came up with the brews.

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.

NIF Innovation Database - An Indispensable World Of Grass Root Innovations

During the course of my four years of study at the prestigious College of Agricultural Engineering, I invariably had some hard feelings about my academic discipline i.e. Agricultural Engineering. I always carried an opinion that, what I am pursuing as part of my course curriculum doesn’t have any relevance to the real world problems and it’s a sub-standard engineering science which lacks fundamentals and couldn’t stand on its own feet. I visited the NIF website earlier also, but with out a purpose and never felt much excited. This may be because I never had a purpose to perceive what it was all about. The purposeful visit this time led me to an altogether new world, a fledgling yet indispensable world of grass root innovations. The visit this time proved to be more purposeful, first by disabusing some prejudged notions I was carrying from the last six years about my academic discipline and second by rekindling the waning hopes on my capabilities as an Agricultural Engineer. Thanks to National Innovation Foundation, for it is not only igniting the minds of professional engineers like me but also the minds of people who never had any sort of formal education but have a sleight of hand to innovate and make the world better.

What interested me more while perusing the NIF website is the innovation database. The innovations pertaining to energy efficiency are very inspiring. I have the personal experience of using both wick based and pump based kerosene stoves at my home and I clearly remember my grandmother’s unflagging attempts to conserve the heat and stabilize the flickering flame by placing a metal sheet around the body surrounding the burner. Usha Shankar’s innovation addressed the same problem which many grandmothers in the developing world face. In the face of depleting fossils and raising fuel costs, this pressure type kerosene stove can offer a paradigm shift towards resource conservation and sustainable energy. Shankar’s ability to gain practical insights in to the heat transfer mechanism is commendable and worth rewarding. Another innovation which I felt interesting is related to harvesting the renewable wind energy. Though the wind mills are used on farm from the last many decades, there has never been an attempt to build the structure which is sustainable and cost effective. Hussain and Darrang’s ingenious thought to use light sheet metal and bamboo posts and engineer a mechanism which can convert rotary motion to reciprocating motion is simply out of box. Encouraging such low cost and sustainable technologies on farm will eventually result in reduced input costs and increased farm incomes which has a direct bearing on the food prices.

Along side the innovation database, what caught my sight were the excerpts taken from Dr Kalam’s address on IGNITE 08 which quotes, “learning gives creativity, creativity leads to thinking, thinking provides knowledge, and knowledge makes you great”. In a couple of lines, the whole philosophy of epistemology was beautifully embedded. I believe, NIF with continued support from its network partners Honey bee network, SRISTI and GIAN, is destined to make India a nation built on innovation.