Ideas are the new currency!

TED Talks India Nayi Soch... A platform, where a good idea made great hanging around in darkness comes into lime light. It’s time to speak up because ideas are the new currency!

 

Here’s a gist of great ideas and thoughts that were presented today:

1.      Gautam Bhan (Researcher, Faculty Member, IIHS): “Basti is not a problem but a solution,” that’s how the talk kick started. We live in a country where there are many people whose monthly income lies between Rs.10000 and Rs.15000 and expecting them to live in a fully urbanized is just too much. A basti is a place which occupies minimum space and provides basic living space for many.  People who work on this mother land for lifetime, do deserve a place for them to live and not sell it for the purpose of money. The stats presented were stunning (A basti in Gujarat turning into a well-developed colony of people Karnataka Govt. trying its best to make houses for poor, similar initiative in Thailand helped build houses for 1 lakh people across 135 cities etc.). He said, if they were given a right to live on the land they stay on, without running bulldozers over them, it could be the start of development as that’s the runway from where the flight of development takes off. It started off with the slum and ended up being named as a ‘Basti.’

2.      Shubhendu Sharma (Eco-Entrepreneur & Afforestation Expert): An industrial engineer turned eco-entrepreneur started off with the feat of planting close to 100 forests across 35 countries. Working for the automobile company Toyota, he met a Japanese Botany expert Akira Miyawaki who helped reduce pollution in Toyota by planting maximum number of trees in minimum space available. Inspired by this, he decided to stop making vehicles and start making forests by not restricting the idea only to their factory. The trees planted using the Miyawaki technique grow close to 5-10 times faster than the other trees. He also added, a forest with close to 300 trees can be grown in an area equal to parking space for six cars and the cost of an IPhone. He concluded saying where ever you see empty space, do remember, that can be turned into a small forest.

3.      Sneha Khanwalkar (Music Director): Sneha’s journey started off when she decided to move out of Indore all alone. A music lover with the help of technology now has her own zone of music instruments surrounding her wherever she goes. I’m not sure what technology that was but looking at that, it felt as if it was a blend of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. Showing the setup, playing a tune and concluding it with a little demo makes her a true music innovator.

4.      Manu Prakash (Physicist and an Inventor): If science is not restricted to text books and exams, it could change a lot of things around. He, along with his friend designed a microscope which could be folded like an origami costing as low as Rs.100 and there microscopes were made out of paper. Close to 10 lakh microscopes were distributed across the world to colleges, research departments, refugees etc. They also deigned a centrifuge (paperfuge) which rotates at a great speed and if a blood capillary was attached to it and rotated for about 90 seconds, it could separate out RBC, plasma and other components of blood. A great thought turned into a great idea presented on a great platform. Sounds great, doesn’t it?
 

5.      Manju Kapur (Author): An Indian novelist who has won many prizes for her writings. Her novel Cutody (2011) is now being telecasted as a serial (Yeh Hai Mohabbatein) on Star Plus. The major focus of her talk was about the things that are taught to a guy and a girl during childhood. In India, we split up the responsibilities based on the gender and with the changing times our thoughts haven’t changed much. She quotes an example of her flight journey where a child keeps crying and mother tries to calm down the kid whereas the father tries for a while then falls asleep. After sometime, the mother tells that her son needs to get married and get a wife so that she can take care of the additional responsibilities. She concluded by saying, with time our thoughts have to change and everyone has to take up all the responsibilities and not split them up based on gender.

6.      Anirudh Sharma (Scientist, Inventor): Starts with a quote by Buckminster Fuller “Pollution is merely a resource that isn't being used properly.” At the MIT Media Lab, they invented a device that captures air pollution which turned this pollution into safe, high-quality ink for art. It was called Air Ink. He also quotes that if 30% of the air pollution across the globe was captured, the air ink made out of that could replace the inks across the world. Air ink sounds like a great prospect for the future. Cool initiative to convert pollution into a useful resource. 

Finally a cool initiative by Star TV, giving Indians a platform to express their ideas and help reach out to people. It is rightly said: “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.”