My favourite study, stacked with books, research papers and leaflets, adorned with paintings and encrusted with fascinating objects that ranged from model airplanes and boats to blowpipes (that’s another story…), belonged to Dr. Ray Wijewardene; that colossus who had once cast his intellectual light on an amazing range of subjects. From this study, this man had reached beyond the seat of his formal academic disciplines of agriculture and engineering into varying spheres that he linked as easily as threading a chain of beads.
He had gathered botany and art, Buddhism and physics, mythology and geography and smoothened it all out in a single, holistic application to life. He had this knack of making the metaphysical simple and obvious…. He had lived simply and offered his knowledge easily, but I have often felt, too few tapped that wellspring of humble brilliance.
The poster on his study door claimed ‘Old Pilots never die, they just move on to another plane’ but as he soared away out of our earthly reach, for those of us fortunate enough to have been exposed to his intellect, there was a clear vacuum. Just over a year has passed and the Ray Wijewardene Charitable Trust (RWCT) has identified the need to fill this vacuum. Since its launch, the RWCT’s first effort was to invite Prof. Anil Gupta to inaugurate the Ray Wijewardene Memorial Lectures. I had heard the name but to be frank was not quite sure where or how; I meant to look him up but never got down to it….
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Study of excellence: Dr. Gupta in Dr. Ray Wijewardene’s office room.
Pic by Anisha Gooneratne |
Obviously I was alone in my ignorance as, at the lecture there was standing room only! In the crowd were engineers and architects, Sarvodaya’s A.T. Ariyaratne, healers, designers and doctors, the Minister Tissa Vitarane and a row full of Ambassadors who had evidently cleared their evening of cocktails and receptions to listen to Prof. Anil Gupta!
Here was a champion of ‘innovators’. An amazingly charismatic speaker who commanded an hour-long, pin drop silence in that overstuffed hall! As he led us from the definition of an innovative thinker to the innovators he has celebrated, I recalled a moniker ‘Grassroots Guru’; this was Anil K. Gupta who had recognized the existence of innovation in all strata of society. He was the man who had reached out to thinkers across India’s vast land mass, delved deep into minute villages and sent word to forgotten hamlets, in his mission to salvage ideas that otherwise would fall between the cracks of the regular system!
‘Grassroots Innovations for Inclusive Development’ presented by its founding thinker, Prof. Anil Gupta sounds like the ultimate solution. Identifying solutions and remedies, some new but often a mere spin off traditional knowledge, Prof. Gupta collates it in his Honeybee Network database. Why is it ‘Inclusive development’? Unlike the normal trend of development the Honeybee Network provides a platform for innovative ideas to be sourced and thereby its origin is included and credited in the development of the idea. Going further the network offers micro venture innovation financing to allow entrepreneurs to commercially launch the innovations. As a professor of Economics, Anil Gupta identified a need for alternative, low energy solutions in India. Further he realized that in the South Asian culture there existed a plethora of simple solutions that were a result of limited economical resources and infrastructural development.
His brilliance becomes evident in the multiple methods he has developed to source and showcase innovative solutions. His dedication to his mission is most evident in the most unique method of sourcing innovation, which are, his 15 years of Shodh Yatra; the exploratory walks through lesser-known tracts of India in search of innovation. The depth of his passion was revealed only when talking to him later, he mentioned that he has now reduced the bi-annual walks to 150 km!
To me, what was most relevant in the lecture was the context of the bachelor who had invented a washing machine powered by his motorcycle. As flagged by Gupta, this would never have been thought of in Western cultures; there a bachelor would have stopped at the closest Laundromat and solved his problem! In our culture, low energy solutions have to be found as against the easily accessed, high-energy solutions of the West. In Anil Gupta’s words, “our cultures are different, our needs are different. In time the West may look to us. You never know! You never know! Ours are low energy solutions….”! These were the future solutions for all mankind that, he was addressing!
He celebrates innovation through multiple processes; SRISTI or the Society for Research and Innovative Technologies and Institutions (www.sristi.org), GIAN or the Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (www.gian.org) both facilitate the Honeybee Network and he has helped set up the National Innovation Foundation (www.nifindia.org) in India. Listening to him, I felt Sri Lanka too needed a Honeybee Network.
A database to store the innovations of legends like Dr. Ray Wijewardene and go further and document the myriad innovations that less luminous Sri Lankans formulate. Here was a network that had also identified the indivisible combinations of technology, history, folklore, food, environment, agriculture…and wrapped it up holistically just as simply as Ray Wijewardene had once done. This need for a formal network, though he never mentioned it to me, I am certain would have been often pondered; perhaps a parallel network was just too big a concept to even entertain as, the physical slowly beat down the monumental intellect that had been Dr. Ray Wijewardene.
I am aware that the RWCT has plans for an award for innovators, which will be known as ‘The Ray’. However, I hoped the RWCT would further strengthen its reserves and engage in this endeavour of creating a network to showcase innovation. But as Prof Anil Gupta told me it would require a champion; I hope that somewhere in Sri Lanka there is a single individual as intellectually capable and more importantly as passionate as Anil Gupta….
The following evening, when I met Prof Anil Gupta at Ray Wijewardene’s residence, he was delighted to inform me that the Honeybee Network had reached the crowded shelves of that famous study. Anil Gupta himself discovered the stack of publications, in the company of Ray Wijewardene’s daughter Anoma.
It immediately confirmed my suspicions of Ray Wijewardene’s interest in a Honeybee-like network and also, just how appropriate that, it was the Grassroots Guru who had first stepped in to fill the void left by the passing of Sri Lanka’s Last Renaissance man! |
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