Mr Gulati started off his speech by
thanking Mrs Narang, Mrs Sharma and Mr Andrew for inviting him to the Second Annual
Robongiers fest, at Pathways School, Gurgaon. He admitted that he loved
schools, as they were his favorite place to be.
He stood as a representative for the ‘Tod
Fod Jod’ Initiative, of the Prime Minister’s National Innovation Council. The
name,’Tod Fod Jod’, means to deconstruct (break), reconstruct (repair) and
recreate (bring together and innovate into a new product). He spoke of his mentor,
Sam Pitroda, who brought in the Telecommunication Revolution to India. He spoke
with a lot of reverence about this innovator, entrepreneur, policy maker with a
hundred plus US patents. He also spoke of Samir Mitra, a man who is committed
to India and has never failed any of his projects.
He continued onto the topic, “Why Youth
Innovation?” Given the fact that 60% of
the country is under 30 years, the demographic dividend is the youth; hence the
focus on schools!
He spoke of the NIC creating a platform, a
National Eco-System for schools, for re-tooling them from mere learning, to
application based systems. This would make us a Nation of Creators and not just
Consumers!!
He spoke about how we have unique
constraints that impact both business and society. He talked about the pros and
cons of the business and society as well; how certain ways of doing things work,
while others don’t, and how we can sell the good ideas to other developing
countries, like Vietnam, Egypt etc. Thus we can capitalize on the export
opportunities, while solving domestic problems. He then continued that how knowledge
does not make creators and that practical application is the need of the hour.
It takes a long time to create he said, as we build on the ideas of a billion
different people. Reverse Innovation will change the world, he exclaimed with
great passion.
He believes strongly that curiosity is the
mother of creativity for curiosity makes us explore. ‘Tod Fod Jod’s’ objective
is to create a network in which children across the world could connect,
collaborate, and discover.
He gave us some samples of the things ‘Tod Fod
Jod’ has worked on, such as a dryer, refrigerator, Tube Light, toilets,
toasters, cell phones, cameras, computers and a many others. He has visited under-
privileged schools also and video-graphed some TPJ moments. He showed some more videos of highly
accomplished kids, e.g. a 19 year old teenager named Adam Cudworth, who sent up a camera in a balloon high into the atmosphere which photographed the curvature of the earth; 16 your old Arts student Samarth Kirloskar, from Pune, whose
interest in aeronautics has helped him create a model plane, that flies and has won him the 1st Prize in the Aeromodelling Competition held at IIT Kanpur, at the Annual Tech Fest (Tech kriti). This is
just an example of all of the amazing things student can create with the help
of ‘Tod Fod Jod’…
