English Quiz for Bank Exams 2016 – Set 10

In India, innovation is emerging
as one of the most important rubrics in the discourse on how to bring about
greater and more consistent economic and social development. One observes
steadily growing investments in R and D across the country, the setting up of
national and state innovation bodies, as well as the introduction of
government-sponsored innovation funds.

There have also been several
conferences and debates on innovation and how to best promote and accomplish it
in India, and a number of articles on the subject, written for newspapers and
magazines, as well as more informal platforms like online forums and blogs.
Academic engagement and Indian authorship on the subject have also exploded in
the last five years. Despite widespread agreement on the importance of
innovation in India, there are wide gulfs between different conceptions of
innovation and the path India should take towards securing benefits through
investments in innovation. Many Indian conversations around innovation begin by
talking about jugaad, that uniquely Indian approach to a temporary fix when
something complex, like an automobile or a steam engine stops working.

However, many observers have
pointed out that while jugaad is certainly innovative, it is a response to the
lack of an innovation culture-more a survival or coping mechanism at a time of
need than a systematic methodology to effectively address a wideranging,
complex set of problems. Another specifically Indian approach to innovation
that has entered into wide currency of late is so-called
‘frugal innovation,’ deemed by many to be the most appropriate for the Indian
context. In its midterm assessment of the 11th five-year plan, the Planning
Commission stressed the need for innovation in India in order to ‘accelerate
its growth and to make growth more inclusive as well as environmentally
sustainable. ‘The document went on to say that’ India needs more frugal
innovation that produces more frugal cost products and services that are
affordable by people at low levels of incomes without compromising the
safety, efficiency, and utility of the products.

The country also needs processes
of innovation that are frugal in the resources required to produce the
innovations. The products and processes must also have frugal impact on the
earth’s resources’. Two people formulated a similar theory called the
More-from-Less-for-More (MLM theory of innovation) theory of Innovation, which
advocates a focus on innovations that allow for more production using fewer
resources but benefit more people. Under this rubric come products that are more
affordable versions of existing technologies. While both frugal innovation and
the MLM theory are certainly valuable in terms of bringing affordable products
and services to a greater number of people, and may even be considered a
necessary first step on India’s innovation path, they barely graze the surface
of what innovation can accomplish. That is innovation is capable of bringing
about complete paradigm-shifts and redefining the way we perceive and interact
with the world. Take the cell phone, for example : it revolutionized
communication in a previously inconceivable way, provided
consumers with a product of unprecedented value and created an entirely new
market. The cell phone was a result of years of directed, intentional
innovation efforts and large investments, and would not have ever been created
if the people responsible simply set out to make the existing telephone cheaper
and more accessible to all.

While jugaad and frugal
innovation may be indicative of the Indian potential for
innovativeness, this potential is not utilized or given opportunity to flourish
due to the lack of an enabling culture. India’s many diverse
and complex needs can be met only through systematic innovation, and major
shifts have to first take place in our educational institutions, government
policies and commercial firms in order for such an innovation enabling culture
to come about.

The one thing that India’s
innovation theorists have not said is that the absence of a culture of
innovation is intrinsically linked to many of the most
intractable problems facing India as a nation. These include poor delivery of
government services, inadequate systems of personal identification and the
absence of widely available financial services for rural poor, health and
sanitation failures.

This list can go on.
Cumulatively, the inability of India as a nation, society and economy to
adequately provide for its own population no longer reflects a failure of
implementation, but rather of a failure of innovation, for there are not
immediately-available off-the-shelf solutions that would make it possible for
these grand challenges facing India to be redressed. Rather, we
need to look at these intractable problems from the more sophisticated and
empowering lens of innovation, for them to begin to be solved.