Dinesh C. Sharma - Indian Innovation, Not Jugaad - 100 Ideas that Transformed India

As India turns 75, Indian Innovation unpacks 100 ideas that transformed a young democratic republic into a complex and thriving nation of a billion-plus people. With compelling urgency and the lucidity of a skilled narrator, Dinesh C. Sharma writes of an India newly independent in 1947 after the British colonial powers left it to its own destiny, of its subsequent wavering journey through the decades all the way to a raging pandemic and of the small and big innovations that paved the way for India.

In doing so, he turns on their heads prevailing notions of innovation often propagated in a galaxy of books on the much used and abused narrative of jugaad that romance the idea of how the poor innovate to get by. Very often, a bulk of the writing heavily focuses on technological, novel, IT or digital solutions and disruptions alone, many of which fizzle out as one-time wonders.

Sharma does the difficult job of writing about the original disruptions that revolutionized the way things were done in a particular sector and context. Covering policies, concepts, and institutions in areas such as, but not limited to, science, healthcare, education, governance, business, grassroots movements, agriculture, fashion, law and others, this is a book one needs to read to better understand India.

Propulsively put together with effortless prose, Sharmas writing, with his decades long journalistic understanding of science, technology, environment, and communities, is teeming with stories and anecdotes of innovations that went on to change the lives of Indians forever. From software parks to shampoo sachets, jan sunwais to oxygen langars, Lijjat papad to mohalla clinics, the Chipko movement to Khabar Lahariya, this is also the story of the unknown, unsung people behind these innovations who are continuing to shape India as we know it.

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Dinesh C. Sharma, 2022

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Drawing up a mega list of innovations spanning decades and across sectors can be challenging, hazardous and vulnerable to criticism. Here is how I navigated through this.

To begin with, lets look at the advantages. I have lived through a large part of the period the book covers. In that sense, it is broadly a journey of exploring innovations that impacted the lives of people of my generation. Procuring grains from a ration shop was a routine activity for millions of Indians in the 1960s. Kids would often be sent to fair price shops to check if the stock of wheat had arrived. This was because the food supplies were erratic and dependent on imports. I also remember the images of lush green farms, signalling the Green Revolution, in the Films Division newsreels screened in cinema halls. Just as the grain supplies were easing, the Oil Shock hit us in the early 1970s, making kerosene scarcer. The response came in the form of a red-and-green wick stove named Nutan, which made its appearance in millions of Indian kitchens. Its blue flame became the talk of the town. The long waiting list for a landline phone connection, serpentine queues to book a railway ticket or trying to buy a car in black were all part of the folklore of the 1970s and 1980s. Innovations and creative policy changes helped us address them all. The economic liberalization and globalization in the 1990s and beyond ushered in several changes. This lived experience was at the back of my mind while drawing up a list of post-Independence innovations.