Mainstream Recognition Of Innovators? Yes, Please!

Putting a grassroot innovator on a currency note for his work is the best recognition out there.

The sun is about to set in the local craft market, where we are to experience art, culture and food.
Kelly Ryan complimented my talk at the inaugural session of WINC2013 and said she was trying to do many things that I mentioned.

It perhaps resonated with her because she herself was trying to seed enterprise among aboriginal communities. We decided to meet for dinner, with her colleagues, at a hotel where I was staying.

And what followed was a stimulating conversation about the local languages that are on the verge of extinction and the need for saving them, if the culture behind them has to be saved too. The lack of public support for seeding enterprises among aboriginal communities was a serious constraint. The traditional knowledge is being lost fast and there isn’t much effort to document it as a means of leveraging it for setting up local enterprises.

When Kelly’s mother died at 43, she left 60,000 Australian Dollars for her. What would be a good way to use this inheritance, Kelly asked herself. And togetherdreaming.com was born. She received additional funding of 20,000 AUD and then formed a group of volunteers and aboriginal women who would join her efforts to conserve language and culture, and above all, set up enterprises based on bio char or other local resource based possibilities.

A teacher, Jodie Edwards, joined the effort of investigating how new words could be developed to describe contemporary in traditional languages. But then how do we record these languages with a very few elders still around, who knowing these languages? Often only in a group setting, one could really validate meanings of different words. One or the other person may know the finer nuances or subtle difference in the context in which a specific word was used. More on this issue later.

While describing the scope of innovations by local communities, I asked as to why there was so little attention to it by government as well as local leaders. Then I recalled what Klynton Wanganeen, a member of indigenous advisory council for the environment minister, told me while traveling in the bus to the local market. “In a first, a picture of an indigenous scientist, teacher, innovator and a great man was featured on a fifty dollar bill. The man was David Uniapon.”

I had never heard about an indigenous or local grassroots innovator being so honoured anywhere in the world. He had developed many devices including a sheep-shearing machine. Annie Vanderwyk, the third lady in our conversation, who was working in community development in the region, was his niece. What a series of coincidences! David had travelled all over Australia among local communities and documented folk stories, much similar to what Shri Meghani has done in Gujarat.

One of the anthropologists had claimed ownership of his collection of stories, but later another scientist republished his collection and offered that to his family. Maybe, Governor of Reserve Bank of India is reading this note and may issue a similar currency note in India.

More on that later, but don’t be surprised if one of these days, you find Rs50 note having photo of one of the many innovators at grassroots. Symbols matter. This will make a difference, no doubt, in modifying the societal attitudes towards creative people at grassroots.

Meanwhile, tribal tales and cultural knowledge are fast getting lost. Why will young people imbibe this knowledge unless it adds some value to their future career or options? Celebrate the pursuit of creative solutions to local problems by bringing out a series of currency notes with different inventors on them. What a better way of bringing Laxmi and Saraswati together?

The author is a professor.