AMRITBHAI Agrawat, a blacksmith from Pikhor village in Gujarat, stared fascinatedly at a barber shaving a customer. Intrigued by the barber's twin-blade razor, Agrawat's agile mind started a process that ended months later in his fashioning a new tool for harvesting groundnuts.

An inveterate inventor, with a tally of more than 20 tools already, Agrawat's latest is a groundnut harvester, inspired by the barber's razor. It utilises two sharp steel blades sandwiched between thicker iron plates, and is designed to cut groundnut plants and uproot the pods.

Though Agrawat has had no formal training, his notebooks contain intricate drawings and detailed measurements that could match technical drawings by most engineers and architects. He has even developed a method for accurate representation on paper of three-dimensional objects.

Agrawat's most successful design is for an improved santi, a traditional farm implement that is used as a plough to till and harvest. His santi consists of a rectangular frame mounted on two small wheels, which reduce the amount of draft power required for towing. He has also designed blade attachments of various sizes and specifications, each suited to a specific job, and whose angling can be changes as needed.

Now 50, Agrawat is busy designing an improved bullock cart. He has built a prototype with a steel frame and used automobile tyres instead of wooden wheels. "This cart," he says, "will be able to carry twice the load of the traditional carts, though requiring far less power for towing."