Analysis of the features attributed to grassroots innovation shows them to be common to all innovations whether in rural, industrializing or industrial locations and does not justify splitting innovation into one with the suffix ‘grassroots’ and another without it as done in India’s current innovation policy. Examples and experience from industrialized countries bring out that innovation policies should adopt an integrated approach for all innovations irrespective of the location or process they emerge from.

It is a government agency that was set up specially to fund non-profits working on rural development. But of late the Council for People’s Action and Advancement of Rural Technology (CAPART) has been plagued by allegations of corruption and inefficiency. After a few failed attempts to reform CAPART, the government has now decided to overhaul the agency which has close to 12,000 NGOs associated with it.

Creativity or out-of-the-box thinking is evenly distributed in all societies in the world. On that count rural India should be a major source of creative minds that has remained untapped. Due to our city-centric policies, it may take decades before modern science and technology (S&T) reaches rural India. Meanwhile the Moving Academy of Medicine and Biomedicine, Pune has developed a module to nurture talent in the villages. The module essentially consists of a base laboratory and villagelevel hub of modern S&T with extensive innovative outreach programmes for village schools.

Poor access to appropriate technologies due to difficult topographies and tough mountain conditions is one of the major causes of poverty, drudgery and natural resources degradation not only in the Indian Central Himalaya, but also in other parts of the Hindu-Kush Himalaya. Of late, deve-

Lack of science and technology (S&T) education and research amenities is the root cause of rural backwardness resulting in villages being treated as