The story of Jaipur foot is quite well-known – how a local artisan
designed a low-cost limb has become a standard of frugality, flexibility
and user-friendliness world over. But when somebody reduces the cost
of a prosthetic to a third, helping fix the limb in three times less
time on 8,000 differently-abled, a new standard is born.
During a recent workshop on Grassroots Innovations for Inclusive Development at Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, I came across an outstanding example.
Jay Prakash of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh was affected by polio and thus couldn’t walk properly. His wife was similarly challenged. To make ends meet and survive with dignity, he went to Jaipur for an artificial limb. It cost him Rs9,000, excluding travel and lodging charges for the three trips he made to the pink city. He wondered whether he could afford one for his wife, but it was equally important for him that she is able to walk again.
He dissembled his artificial limb, understood its design, material and the way to make it. At that stage, he needed support not only to experiment, but also to scale up his success of which he was confident. The then collector of Bijnor district, R Mouli, extended full support to Prakash. He also helped him with support from the industry and other philanthropic organisations and individuals.
Prakash thus made artificial limbs in less than one-third of the cost and fitted them three times less time. More than 8,000 have so far benefited from this innovation. He is now working on making an artificial hand that will enable the differently-abled to write. He has now set up a voluntary organisation – JP Vikalanshiksha evam Prashikshan Sansthan, Kumharpura. The local district level officer, Amrita Singh, has been helping Prakash in serving the society in such an extremely affordable and effective way.
Tens of Thousands of Jay Prakash are in different parts of India – unrecognised, unsung. The public administration never defined its role as purveyor of creative ideas for nurturing them. The experience of this workshop and numerous ideas that came out of it in a few hours demonstrate that a great deal more can be done to promote innovation in public system.
How do we thus create systems for scouting, spawning and sustaining such indigenous innovations? The idea of an innovation cell is very tempting! But having done that, the function of creative and empathetic problem-solving gets concentrated in a small department or cell. The whole idea is then doomed.
How do we then balance the desire to institutionalise and need for autonomy, agency and authority for diversified, decentralised experimentation? I firmly believe that the problem is less about generation of ideas, and more about the missing support for them.
How do we test the intention of an organisation to promote innovation? According to me, if an organisation is interested in responding to existing ideas – inside and outside – with alacrity, empathy and necessary administrative and financial support, then more people will take initiative and even more will support them. It’s the tendency to compartmentalise and ‘systematise’ innovation process, which leads to death of spontaneity and samvedana.
We need systems to scale up innovations, but I’m not sure that for generating ideas, we can go very far with a formulistic approach. Given the stress of expectation and with a few illustrations, it is also not impossible to speed up process of generating ideas to meet needs. Much will depend on credibility, which participants feel, the system has. In absence of demonstrative responsiveness, learned helplessness legitimises inertia.
The society’s expectations are increasing, their patience plummeting and therefore, administrative innovation cannot be delayed for long. But we must ask a question. When a whole issue of the journal, The Administrator, was in 1992 dedicated to celebrate some of the most outstanding innovations at that time, why would it take more than two decades to act upon some of them and scout many more?
The initiative by Cabinet Secretariat under Result Framework Document (RFD) is a good one, provided it is backed by concrete measures to implement existing ideas, scale-up proven innovations and support new ideas. The guidelines for District Innovation Fund, which was set up by 13th finance commission (for which I’d written the policy note), provide sufficient evidence as to how not to promote innovations in government.
If a district collector cannot be trusted for seeking ideas and supporting the missing last mile infrastructure, then such a fund makes no sense. The subsidiary principle implies that decision must be taken as close to the point of action as possible. Will innovations ever grow, if this principle is systematically violated in almost every policy?
The author is a professor at IIMA.
During a recent workshop on Grassroots Innovations for Inclusive Development at Lal Bahadur Shastri Academy of Administration, Mussoorie, I came across an outstanding example.
Jay Prakash of Bijnor in Uttar Pradesh was affected by polio and thus couldn’t walk properly. His wife was similarly challenged. To make ends meet and survive with dignity, he went to Jaipur for an artificial limb. It cost him Rs9,000, excluding travel and lodging charges for the three trips he made to the pink city. He wondered whether he could afford one for his wife, but it was equally important for him that she is able to walk again.
He dissembled his artificial limb, understood its design, material and the way to make it. At that stage, he needed support not only to experiment, but also to scale up his success of which he was confident. The then collector of Bijnor district, R Mouli, extended full support to Prakash. He also helped him with support from the industry and other philanthropic organisations and individuals.
Prakash thus made artificial limbs in less than one-third of the cost and fitted them three times less time. More than 8,000 have so far benefited from this innovation. He is now working on making an artificial hand that will enable the differently-abled to write. He has now set up a voluntary organisation – JP Vikalanshiksha evam Prashikshan Sansthan, Kumharpura. The local district level officer, Amrita Singh, has been helping Prakash in serving the society in such an extremely affordable and effective way.
Tens of Thousands of Jay Prakash are in different parts of India – unrecognised, unsung. The public administration never defined its role as purveyor of creative ideas for nurturing them. The experience of this workshop and numerous ideas that came out of it in a few hours demonstrate that a great deal more can be done to promote innovation in public system.
How do we thus create systems for scouting, spawning and sustaining such indigenous innovations? The idea of an innovation cell is very tempting! But having done that, the function of creative and empathetic problem-solving gets concentrated in a small department or cell. The whole idea is then doomed.
How do we then balance the desire to institutionalise and need for autonomy, agency and authority for diversified, decentralised experimentation? I firmly believe that the problem is less about generation of ideas, and more about the missing support for them.
How do we test the intention of an organisation to promote innovation? According to me, if an organisation is interested in responding to existing ideas – inside and outside – with alacrity, empathy and necessary administrative and financial support, then more people will take initiative and even more will support them. It’s the tendency to compartmentalise and ‘systematise’ innovation process, which leads to death of spontaneity and samvedana.
We need systems to scale up innovations, but I’m not sure that for generating ideas, we can go very far with a formulistic approach. Given the stress of expectation and with a few illustrations, it is also not impossible to speed up process of generating ideas to meet needs. Much will depend on credibility, which participants feel, the system has. In absence of demonstrative responsiveness, learned helplessness legitimises inertia.
The society’s expectations are increasing, their patience plummeting and therefore, administrative innovation cannot be delayed for long. But we must ask a question. When a whole issue of the journal, The Administrator, was in 1992 dedicated to celebrate some of the most outstanding innovations at that time, why would it take more than two decades to act upon some of them and scout many more?
The initiative by Cabinet Secretariat under Result Framework Document (RFD) is a good one, provided it is backed by concrete measures to implement existing ideas, scale-up proven innovations and support new ideas. The guidelines for District Innovation Fund, which was set up by 13th finance commission (for which I’d written the policy note), provide sufficient evidence as to how not to promote innovations in government.
If a district collector cannot be trusted for seeking ideas and supporting the missing last mile infrastructure, then such a fund makes no sense. The subsidiary principle implies that decision must be taken as close to the point of action as possible. Will innovations ever grow, if this principle is systematically violated in almost every policy?
The author is a professor at IIMA.
Source : DNA , 16th June 2013
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