Innovations that leave one astounded

What if you are not wearing a helmet before going for a ride on your two-wheeler? Nothing exceptional would happen, if luck is on your side you will reach home safely, else your family might have to rush to the hospital to see you!

God forbid any family goes through the trauma of seeing a dear one involved in a road accident. But this is a stark reality of the times we live in.

So to prevent two- wheeler drivers to ride without a helmet, Arthi, Vinotha and Laila from Tamil Nadu and Jitendra Sahu from Odisha have conceived an interesting idea – if the helmet is life saving why  can’t it be used for ignition to start two-wheelers! This effectively means that until the rider has worn the helmet, the vehicle will not start!

Arthi, Vinotha and Laila independently thought about this problem but Jitendra conceptualised and developed a working model , which the youngsters presented  at the recently inaugurated Innovation Exhibition at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

The concept of Innovation Exhibition was started in 2009, when former president Pratibha Devisingh Patil invited National Innovation Foundation–India (NIF) to set up an exhibition at the President House. And the first exhibition of innovation was organised in 2010.

This year, more than two dozen innovations related to agriculture  and farming technology were displayed at the exhibition.

Mansukhbhai Prajapati from Gujarat showcased his patented Mitticool range of earthen products which included a ‘clay fridge’. The fridge does not require electricity and keeps food fresh too.

The concept works on the principal of evaporation. Water from the upper chambers drips down the side, gets evaporated, leaving the chambers cool. He has also developed a clay tawa with black non-stick food grade coating.

Shalini Kumar from Bihar had an idea to make a walker with adjustable legs. She saw her grandfather using a walker and noticed that he could use only the walker comfortably while walking on a level surface and faced difficulty while climbing the stairs. Moved by her grandfather’s plight, Shalini developed and created the modified walker with adjustable legs.

Concerned about accidental deaths in car,  due to suffocation, SR Valva of Tamil Nadu, Pratyush Kumar Sahoo and Bikash Kumar Mallick from Odisha  put their head together to hit on the idea of installing carbon dioxide-level indicators in car.

Their idea was to have a system in four-wheelers to detect levels of oxygen/carbon dioxide which would open windows when oxygen level dropped or carbon dioxide level rose inside the vehicle, thereby preventing accidental deaths of children or pets locked inside the car.

Meanwhile, there were technology innovations in agricultural techniques like areca nut cutter by Wazir Hayath from Karnataka and walnut cracker by Mushtaq Ahmad Dhar from Jammu and Kashmir.

Interestingly, a few of the innovations have found eager takers in the industries too.  These include a sugarcane bud planter and bud chipper by Roshan Lal Vishwakarma from Madhya Pradesh, a tractor operated technique which reduces plantation cost of sugarcane from Rs 6,000 per acre to Rs 800 per acre.

The bud chipper easily removes the bud from the node, reducing the cost of plantation and tissue culture. The technology has been taken by Tata Agrico.