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Honey bee publish details |
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Twenty-five years of Honey Bee Network: innovators from grassroots reach the President of India’s house |
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When The President of India hosted grassroots innovators, children, farmers, artisans etc., as Innovation Scholar in residence at the President of India’s house, a great milestone had been achieved. Despite enormous changes in the condition of World Wide Web network and the Honey Bee Network, both evolved about 25 years ago, ours is still the largest database of its kind available now in many languages for spreading the seeds of sustainable, democratic, open frugal innovations and ideas. Ideally, there should have been a large number of organisations, academic and otherwise, to have encouraged sharing of knowledge, of course with prior informed consent of the knowledge providers. Millions of dollars have been spent by regional and international financial and development institutions on so-called participatory technology development projects since 1990s. And yet, not many NGOs and individuals have developed open source people’s knowledge databases. Even the public research institutions have not gone very far with this idea. Shodhyatras covering over 5000 km of learning walk through villages in most of the states of India have helped us recognise, respect and reward innovation at the doorstep of the creative people. Competitions for uncovering ideas, biodiversity based knowledge, and recipes having some uncultivated ingredients have helped us uncover many hidden heroes of our society. One reason for starting the Honey Bee Network was that academics and companies used to benefit from the knowledge of people without acknowledging them, cross pollinating ideas among them, or sharing benefits with them. The anonymity of knowledge producers and providers was (and is) a major handicap in pursuing ethical and a fair knowledge exchange between formal and informal sector. IIMA has provided a very generous and hospitable sanctuary for the Network newsletter all these years. sristi.org, (1993), gian.org (1997), nifindia.org (2000), techpedia.sristi.org (2009), techpedia.in/gyti (2012) are some of the platforms that the Network has spawned. Today, the discourse on open, frugal and green grassroots innovations has included a large number of actors around the world. Several pioneering concepts, processes and institutional platforms have been developed over the last 25 years, which can shorten and smoothen the learning journeys of other scholars, practitioners, children, youth, women workers, innovators, community leaders, etc. Among various concepts/models, one can include grassroots innovations (1989, 1991, 2006), knowledge rich, economically poor people, deviant research (1988, 2007), empathetic innovations (2008), reciprocal innovations, autopoiesis model of innovation (selfdesign, self-correcting innovation value chains), technology commons, Micro Venture Innovation Fund (MVIF, ICCIG, GIAN, 1997, NIF 2003), GTIAF [Grassroots Technological Innovation Acquisition Fund, NIF 2010], g2G (grassroots to Global, 2001), etc. The Honey Bee Network set up in 1988-89 essentially provided the spur and space for these ideas besides the academic research at IIMA, SRISTI, GIAN and NIF. Things are changing and soon mobile phone communities might emerge to discuss experiments in the fields and firms, among workers and employers, among activists and their adversaries to create even more open and democratic culture of developmental dialogue. I hope when we write about golden jubilee of web and the Honey Bee Network, we would have far more content in Indian and other languages on the web than we have today. Language shapes the habit of thought, as many linguists have observed. Thoughts fertilise the culture, the diverse thoughts fertilise and pulverise the minds even more. And yet “Minds on the margin are not marginal minds.†|
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| Volume No. |
Honey Bee 25(4) & 26(1) back cover (25 years celebration) |
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