Indian Innovators | Discovery channel video

These innovations are from National Innovation foundation (NIF http://www.nif.org.in/). Also it will be relevant to mention here that SRISTI(www.sristi.org) is a non-governmental organisation setup to strengthen the creativity of grassroots inventors, innovators and ecopreneurs engaged in conserving biodiversity and developing eco-friendly solutions to local problems. And both SRISTI and NIF are collaborators of the famous Honey Bee Network (http://www.sristi.org/honeybee.html). Honey Bee Network is a network of like-minded individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).The Network has been woven around three basic ideals.
The Network believes that a knowledge system in order to become sustainable has to be both just and fair. Hence, while collecting knowledge from the knowledge holder, the Network has made it a norm to acknowledge the knowledge provider with name and reference, if otherwise not desired by the knowledge provider. This particular practice has come handy in protecting the IPR of the knowledge provider.
In the second place, the source of knowledge i.e. in the case of Honey Bee Network, the traditional knowledge holders and grassroots innovators must be acknowledged, if otherwise desired so by the knowledge holders themselves.
Finally, any proceed that accrues from the value addition of local traditional knowledge and innovation; a fair and reasonable share must go back to the knowledge holders.

I wonder how the effort in pedal powering the washing machine compares with washing by hand. Guess is it will be more, since typical wash-cycles in motorized washing machines are half-hour to one-hour! Plus, WMs are notoriously wasteful of water

Centre for Liberation Technology in Nasik seeks funds

Excerpts from Nitin Paranjape's mail:

Liberation technologies are those which fundamentally are within the control of the people, which they themselves can produce and use, and which frees the people from dependency on multinational corporations and global market economy.

The centre will strive to nurture leadership and actions in forms of such technologies, education processes, experiments and consciousness that requires active engagement of communities to journey of rediscovering themselves as spiritual and ecological beings and together create a world which is sustainable, at peace, just and democratic.

Right now, we have only established contact with National Innovation Foundation, Ahmedabad who has shown interest to collaborate. The partnership is yet to evolve into financial terms but it will be based on assignments. We already have young designers/researchers who are committed to this cause. We are also conscious about raising our own funds and enable the operations of the organisation to be less dependent on external sources. But at the initial stages we need support to start our enterprise.

For details: http://is.gd/9F6Zk