Grassroots Innovation Filling Institutional Voids
When I interviewed the founders of Wildlife Rescue in Delhi, I realized how powerful simple, local innovations can be when big institutions fail to act.They shared a story from their childhood in the 1990s. “We took a black kite to the bird hospital, but to our surprise, they didn’t even touch it. They said it’s a carnivore bird, it eats meat, it’s dirty, take it away,” they told me. That day they saw the harsh truth: while pigeons or parrots were cared for, birds of prey like kites were left to die on the roadside.
Later, when they started rescuing kites themselves, they faced another challenge. Many injured birds had deep cuts on their wings from kite strings. The veterinarians told them, “These muscles are too fine. They cannot be stitched. Nothing can be done.”
But the brothers found a surprising source of knowledge that pigeon fliers had. These men, often with no formal education, had been treating their racing pigeons for years. “We saw how they take a needle and thread and carefully stitch the wing muscles. What veterinarians said was impossible, they were already doing,” they explained to me.
This gave them confidence. They learned from the pigeon fliers, combined that knowledge with advice from human doctors, and slowly developed their own methods. Over time, they created a proper surgical process to repair kite wings. Today, those same techniques are respected and even presented at international conferences.
Their journey shows that innovation does not always come from experts or big institutions. Sometimes it comes from ordinary people with practical wisdom, like pigeon fliers with a needle and thread. As the founders told me, “The moment we thought about closing, we remembered those birds starving and dying on the roadside. That thought has always prevented us from giving up.”
Honey Bee Network, GIAN, and SRISTI persistently believe that this is what grassroots innovation looks like, as it fills gaps left by institutions and creates solutions where none existed before
Contact:
Organisation Name: Wildlife Rescue, Delhi
Founders: Nadeem Shehzad and Mohammad Saud
Contact No: +91 98106 39698
Website: https://raptorrescue.org/
