a national Innovation Foundation has been formed by the Union government for encouraging grassroot level innovations. The government is also planning to create a National Register for Innovation for documenting the information gathered by the foundation. "The idea is to recognise work being done in each and every part of India. Once we have a register we can think of intellectual property protection also,' said R A Mashelkar, director general of New Delhi-based Council of Scientific and Industrial Research.

The government is also in the process of setting up a traditional knowledge digital library (tkdl). The tkdl portal will have a web-based search facility. It will be able to provide full text of retrieval database of traditional knowledge. "Our traditional knowledge is vast and very important. The only thing we have to do is to provide it a scientific base by research. tkdl will help in generating awareness regarding India's rich heritage,' Mashelkar added.