Linking Grassroots Innovations, Enterprise, Investments, Incentives and Institutions: 

Democratizing knowledge through Honey Bee network 

Anil K Gupta, Brij Kothari, Kirit Patel, Srinivas. Murali Krishna, Neeraj Joshi, Riya Sinha, Pawan Mehra, Jyoti Capoor, Dileep Koradia, Hema Patel, Shailesh Shukla, Vijaya Sherry Chand, Astad Pastakia and large number of other Honey Bee network members

1.	Decline of welfare state in the developed world has been accompanied in recent times with the denial or ‘unfeasibility’ of similar pursuits in the developing countries. Squeezed by structural reforms, lack of new social imagination  is as much a commentary on the state of our civic consciousness as on the fragility and bankruptcy of intellectual apparatus drawn from Legacy of Marshal Plan and ‘do gooding’ state bureaucracies. I argue that we need a new paradigm of envisioning social change and development built around overcoming information asymmetries.

Knowledge can indeed become a means of power if coalition/ networks of relevant actors evolve. The chemistry of evolution of such networks which connect information, institutions, incentives with innovations and enterprises is the subject of this paper.

French philosopher, Abbé Pierre argued that modern ( read western) society is confronted with three realities. First tragedy is the growing power of media and travelling which deny civilized society an excuse that it did not know; second deals with obligation of developed countries to deal with rising problem of unemployment by reducing working hours and the third refers to the challenge of enormous free time ( Jack, 1997). I argue in this paper that every time Information technologies (ITs) reduce information asymmetries, these can also help in increasing responsibility. One can no more take an excuse that one could not intervene since, as Abbé says, one did not know. But not just that, as I illustrate with the example of Knowledge Network/Centre approach to augment grassroots creativity, IT also helps align key actors in civil society. The alienation, fragmentation, and dislocation of Knowledge space make it difficult for creative urges of society at grassroots level to coalesce. The market forces, as these have evolved, are generally successful in bringing certain interests at specific scales together. But market failure is evident when the transaction costs are high. Investment in IT infrastructure can help in reducing these Transaction costs for those whose ability to bear it is low. But this will not happen automatically. Just as paving roads in the forests often leads to accelerated deforestation , IT infrastructure can lead to faster erosion of local knowledge and wisdom unless appropriate institutional interventions are simultaneously made. 

2.	Legacy of development: Developmental paradigm has been dominated for at least half a century, by the idea that role of state or civil society is to provide what poor people lack i.e.material resources, opportunities for skill or resource augmentation or employment. Strategies never built upon a resource in which poor people often are rich in i.e., their knowledge. So much so that developmental lexicon in the last decade adopted a term with great alacrity i.e. ‘resource poor people’. As if ‘knowledge’ is not a resource or that poor people are poor even in this resource also. This is a blemish that one could find in almost every major developmental writing. I plead that we change it, and right away. Once knowledge is recognized as the fundamental building block of the developmental options for the disadvantaged communities around the world, the role of information technologies becomes conspicuous in this envisioning process. 

3.	Incentives and Information: Information Technology can be harnessed to generate incentives for knowledge rich economically poor people to share their knowledge without exhausting their IPRs and creating fear of being robbed of the only resource left with them i.e their knowledge. It can do so by providing a global registration system such as INSTAR discussed herein later. IT can also provide glue to hold institutions for conservation together particularly when the need for horizontal flow of information among communities facing different challenges is very high. 

4.	Higher the specificity of environmental challenges, higher may be the isolation and fragmentation of local knowledge systems. And yet analogic learning systems thrive precisely on such dissimilarities and discontinuities of knowledge systems in concrete terms. Fragmentation  of knowledge space takes place due to various social divisions and cleavages, discontinuities in inter-generational transfer of traditional functional knowledge, and incommensurability between knowledge and the accompanying ecological and other resource contexts. Fragmentation can also arise if contemporary innovations for resource use are not shared widely due to dominance of external knowledge systems or due to contempt for local and familiar knowledge as happens in many communities and societies. The analogic learning can help overcome many of these discontinuities by helping trigger (a) search for solutions in different contexts, (b) provide clues about the kind of relationships that can be pursued, (c) enrich the repertoire of local communities and innovators so that they can independently locate the ideas for solutions as well as alternative materials. The idea is that even if fish are not found in a dry regions, knowledge a tribal community uses plants to numb fishes before catching them easily may trigger some other uses of toxic plants in a pastoral community, say for veterinary medicine or vice versa.

5.	IT can provide institutional mechanism for abstracting and exchanging the heuristics underlying innovations dealing with various challenges. It cannot do certain things. Or even if it can, not very well. The ethical values which encourage sharing of knowledge at local level are also accompanied by general contempt for or indifference towards local innovations in many societies. This paper provides some practical ways in which low cost IT applications can provide incentives for sharing local innovations and generate institutional mechanisms for production, reproduction, exchange and critical but appreciative peer evaluation of knowledge systems for sustainable resource use.

6.	The knowledge systems that enable people to survive particularly in high risk environments have involved blending secular with sacred, reductionism with holism, short term options with long term ones, specialized with diversified strategies whether involving individual or collective material or non material pursuits. The classical dichotomous approaches have seldom worked. The environmental ethic of these communities have also reflected these blends contrary to the populist rhetoric of so called unitary approaches with one kind of strategies say, holistic ones dominating and displacing the other, say reductionist ones. 

7.	Higher the stress whether of physical, technological, market, or socio-economic kind, greater is the probability that disadvantaged communities and individuals generate innovative and creative alternatives for resource use. It must be particularly noted that innovations whether originating in traditional or contemporary consciousness could be evolved by communities as well as individuals. Excessive emphasis on communities to the exclusion of individuals may have contributed to the widespread indifference towards entrepreneurial potential of the knowledge rich economically poor people. 

8.	Diversification and Social Exchange: The nature of IT needs of a community are likely to be linked to the respective portfolio characteristics of the household. These are in turn linked with the pattern of social interactions. The variability in social interactions will also depend upon the extent of ecological variabilities as evident from the portfolio characteristics of the households.  The households could have four kinds of portfolios of economic activities. If we take average income on one side of the matrix and variance in the income on the other side, the four possibilities can be seen as below:

Mean or Average Income   

High     Low

			High

Variance

			Low 

We can see four kinds of portfolios viz. High Mean - High Variance (HM HV), High Mean - Low Variance (HM LV), Low Mean High Variance (LM HV) and Low Mean Low Variance (LM LV).  

HM-HV portfolios imply that households have such enterprises which generate very high income but also may have high fluctuations.  If households prefer such enterprises, they should then be able to reduce the variance by controlling fluctuations or insuring against the same.  Their access to institutions should ensure their ability to meet the expected high input requirement of such portfolios and their control over resources to reduce the fluctuations should imply their stronger power over institutions.  The nature of networks such households would have among themselves and with other social groups as well as institutions (private as well as public) will be characteristically different from other groups as we will see below.  The incentives for bringing such people together would also differ from those who have different kind of portfolios. IT needs of such household are addressed well even now though these can certainly be addressed better. Their opportunism can be harnessed through linkage with innovative potential of household say with low mean and high variance ( LMHV). Golden triangle of creativity as discussed in  next part ( fig: 1) aims  to do that by linking investment and entrepreneurial class with innovative potential of disadvantaged communities and individuals.

HM-LV portfolios would comprise enterprises that give high income with low fluctuation.  Households with such portfolios would obviously have very high control over resources and institutions and also accumulate maximum surplus among all the groups. Their IT needs will be more of leisure value kind. They do not face much risk and thus also do not show much enterprise. Their needs are predictable and may get addressed by the market forces since these are more certain and also stable.

LM-LV portfolios characterize the household having low technology or low input intensive enterprises such as local varieties of crops, local breeds of livestock with low but stable demand.  These households are generally subsistence oriented and can break even with some difficulty.  The culture and social ethos of such groups is bound to be governed by stable institutions, networks and cohesive leadership.  There will be limited incentives for entrepreneurship and deviance.  But given their marginalization in economic terms, they do evolve low cost traditional knowledge as well as contemporary innovations whether in herbal use, or crafts. Their IT needs are not met by the existing infrastructure except by innovative Knowledge Networks like Honey Bee. 

LM-HV portfolios are the characteristics of most vulnerable households.  These households would have such breeds of livestock or crops which are highly vulnerable to environmental and market fluctuations leading to very low surplus.  In fact most of the households with such portfolios would have deficit in their budget.  Their dependence on other social groups and informal institutions like moneylender or trader is enormous.  Their vulnerability often acquires highly exploitative forms dividing them into different sub-groups or mutually conflictive identifies.  Collective action among such people is extremely difficult for economic purposes.  For cultural and social purposes, they have perhaps one of the strongest indigenous institutional infrastructure.  Their tacit knowledge base is rich but often includes images of low self esteem due to long history of exploitation.  There are, however, exceptions particularly among artisans and pastoralists.  Such groups may have a stronger self image and also less vulnerable in regions where some demand for their products exist. The risks spread over space, sector and season or time also need to be appraised carefully to understand the evolution of institutional or individual solution.

The last two kinds of portfolios have some characteristic differences from the first two. For the sake of convenience we could consider the latter two much more nature dependent where as the earlier two are much more market dependent. 

9.	The key contrasts in communication and networking strategies are:

				Market dominated	 		Nature dominated 

1. Communication 
system     				Digital				Analogical

2. Pooling of
resources				Very low			Very high

3. Reliance on
common
properties				Low				Very high

4. Settling of
books of 
account				Very short term		Long term

5. The proportion
of women 
headed or
managed house-
holds		     			Very low			Very high

6. Women
participation
rates					Very low			Very high

7. Reciprocities 				Specific			Generalized

In high population density, market dominated regions the people can manage their needs (both expected and unexpected ) especially by relying on markets or their individual reserves/inventories.  If a guest comes unexpectedly, one can always get things from the market or immediate neighborhood (where community structures exist). In nature dominated regions such possibilities are limited.  One has to rely on informal co-operation.  Similarly, if it rains on one side of the village and not other, the pooling of bullocks and implements may become necessary so that the scarce moisture is not lost.  

The pooling of resources is a logical necessity in nature dominated regions because the cost of individual maintenance of inventories would be very high given the uncertainty in the environment.  The institutions which generate expectation of co-operation and provide legitimacy for collective action have to evolve to make collective survival possible.  

The communication systems involve metaphorical or analogical style in the nature dominated regions largely because the ambiguity and ambivalence provide the space for personal meanings.  Unlike digital communication which is in terms of yes or no, or other precise categories, the analogical communication required messages to be coded in culture specific metaphors.  The compliance of collective decisions was much higher in analogic systems than the digital ones.  By a seemingly paradoxical implication, the entropy is least in analogical communication. This has obvious implications for IT applications and styles in such regions. 

The reason for a very long timeframe in settling IOUs is the understanding that various exchanges are actually not settled but merely carried forward.  Given variabilities in endowments, exchange in one resource market may be settled against another resource.  The generalized reciprocities dominate over the specific ones in nature dominated regions.  It is very difficult to work out the equivalence between thatching of hut by someone with ploughing of fields.  It is for this reason that the book of accounts is settled in long term and in generalized reciprocal form.  

The proportion of women headed or managed households is invariably more in these regions because of the high male emigration from these regions to the other market dominated regions.  This has implications for the choice of technology, nature of social institutions and sustainability of any particular organizational design.  

10.	The information technology needs in regions with majority of household managed by women will be quite different from regions dominated by male decision makers. The health needs, agricultural systems, technological challenges and interface between cultural taboos and economic pressures will be most acute in these regions. Knowledge network can generate new choices by connecting one group of women who may have overcome some of the socio-cultural contrasts to their economic improvement with another group that is struggling to do so.

11.	As far as institution building is concerned particularly for managing common pool/property resources, opportunity for lateral learning among communities was never more strong as now. The disruption of old traveling/migration routes and shortening of pastoral spaces /seasons due to increased cultivation, the opportunities for social interaction have reduced. Modern management science hasn’t thrown up many new models of managing natural resources in  sustainable manner given general neglect of ethical and cultural institutional issues. SRISTI data base on Indigenous institutions for managing CPRs drawn from published as well as unpublished literature from 20 countries has been put together in a data base. The translation of such a data base in vernacular languages to make this accessible to various communities struggling with similar issues will go a long way in addressing lateral learning needs through IT applications.

12.	Innovations in technological, cultural or institutional subsets often remain isolated and unconnected despite an otherwise reasonably robust informal Knowledge network in existence. 

Knowledge Network that connects Innovations, Enterprise and investments ( see fig one) in an Institutional context is what appears to be the most viable approach for sustainable development in future. The points of departure for Honey bee network begun eight years ago were: firstly, we, the outsiders, should not make the poor complain when we take away their knowledge just as flowers do not when bees take away pollen, and secondly we should connect people to people just as bees do while pollinating. SRISTI supports Honey Bee network by linking six E’s i.e. ethics, equity, excellence, environment, education and efficiency in enterprise.

13.	We have to ensure that knowledge rich economically poor people are not robbed of the only resource in which they are rich i.e. their knowledge by transforming our ethical and institutional norms including the ones dealing with intellectual property rights of individual as well as communities in informal sector vis a vis in formal sector. Biodiversity and Desert conventions provide useful leads in this direction. 

14.	We can help strengthen people to people learning only when we ensure communication in vernacular languages and media. Honey Bee network has created new standards of accountability a ethics in dealing with grassroots innovations. The formal sector can not use the knowledge of poor without acknowledgements, citation and of course prior informed consent—a notion we argued much before Biodiversity Convention came into existence. Similarly, the documentation and dissemination of these innovations must take place in local languages and without exhausting IPRs of these communities and individuals. For the latter, we propose that INSTAR system is institutionalized by the WTO as well as CBD etc., so that  International Network for Sustainable Technological Applications and Registration (INSTAR, see appendix one for details)  becomes part of Knowledge Network for augmenting coping strategies of poor in creative manner.

15.	In a recent paper , Gupta argued that the publication of local knowledge deprives on one hand any benefit that may arise from value addition in local knowledge to the individual or community or nation concerned and on the other, makes it possible for people struggling with similar problem to learn from it. This happens through publication in local languages as attempted by Honey bee. However, the challenge is to marry two goals of easy and quick opportunity for lateral learning (through local language publication) and sharing of benefits through value addition in the same knowledge. A quick legitimacy to Data Bases like Honey Bee and registration system of innovations may provide the answer. Honey bee will then make its data bases accessible to all patent offices in lieu of the protection provided to the communities and individuals whose knowledge is cataloged in it. The alternative of greater secrecy and withholding of knowledge will make every one loser through a) greater erosion of oral knowledge, b) continued unwillingness of younger generation to learn the knowledge, innovations and practices developed over a long period of time, c) depriving any opportunity to knowledge holders as well as those dependent upon them to improve their livelihood prospects through sharing of possible benefits, d) lack of material incentives for conservation of endangered species, e) knowledge rich poor communities may migrate out due to low opportunities for subsistence an employment and not take care of local resource or over exploit the resource itself netting very little value in a short period of time, and f) stifling the very creative and buoyant laboratory of innovations at grassroots by denying any social esteem for such knowledge through material as well as nonmaterial incentives and general neglect.

Since it will be very difficult for any and every community to seek protection of its knowledge and inventive recipes for various purposes such as herbal pesticides, human or veterinary medicines, vegetative dyes, etc., a registration system should be developed  as explained below:

16.	INSTAR: SRISTI and Honey bee network have been pleading  for a global system of registration for grassroots innovations. Honey bee database has more than 2300 innovations with name and addresses of the innovative/creative community and or individuals along with the name of the communicators through whom we have learned these innovations. 

Such a registry will prevent any firm or individual to seek patent on  community knowledge as well as on knowledge and innovations produced by individuals without some kind of cross licensing.

It will be possible to achieve the following results from such  a registry:

i)	acknowledgement of individual and collective creativity

ii)	grant entitlements to grassroots innovators for receiving a share of any returns that may arise from  commercial  applications of their knowledge,  innovations  or practices with or without value addition secondary entitlements

iii)	Linking the golden triangle of entrepreneurship by linking Investments, enterprise and innovations. Small scale investors in North and South can not afford to go to various countries, scan diversity of knowledge and resources, negotiate contracts and invest up front huge investments for value addition. If they do not participate, then the field will remain dominated by only large corporations. This register will help small scale investors seek opportunities of communication with communities and individual innovators and explore opportunities of investment. Large number of potential negotiations will take place increasing the opportunities for innovative communities and individuals. The competition among the investors tempered by competition among potential suppliers of a various kinds of knowledge as well as diversity will moderate expectations on both the sides. 

(iv)	an autonomous authority of which local community representatives will be the majority members could be entrusted with the responsibilities of having access to all the contracts. A copy of the contracts may have to be deposited with this Authority so as to avoid short changing of the communities. These contracts will also be scrutinized to see whether management plans for sustainable extraction of diversity have been drawn upon scientifically appropriate manner or not. Penalties may have to be imposed for non-sustainable extraction of herbs by domestic as well as external extractors.

 (v)	Each entry in the Register will be coded according to an universal system like ISBN. The postal pin code of the habitat of the community or individuals registering innovations will be incorporated in the indexation system so that geo-referencing of innovations can be done.  In due course the contextual information of innovations can also be incorporated in the system so  that this systems  of innovations can help cross connect the communities having similar ecological situations or facing similar constraints or challenges.

 (vi)	The entry in the register will in the first stage be mere acknowledgement of creativity and innovation at grassroots level. But later some of the innovations will be considered appropriate for award of inventors certificate or a kind of petty patent which is a limited purpose and limited duration protection. Essential purpose of this innovation also is to enable the potential investors (a cooperative of consumers, producers, an entrepreneur, or a large firm  in private or public sector).

(vii)	The award of certificate will also increase entitlement of innovator/s for access to  concessional credit and risk cover so that transition from collector, or producer of herbs to developer and marketeer of value added products can take place in cases where innovators deem that fit.

(vii)	The registration system will also be part of Knowledge Network linking problem solving people across the world at grassroots level( see discussion on Knowledge network in the later section). This will promote people to people learning and serve as a multi-language, multi level, multi media( oral, textual,  electronic ) clearing house for local and indigenous communities.  Wherever necessary and possible, formal scientific institutions will be linked up in the network.

Apart  from  the registration system a large number  of specific incentives would need to be developed for different categories of knowledge,  innovations and practices. Similarly  the  incentives for preservation of sustainable lifestyles of indigenous communities  would also be different. 

We realize that most governments in developing countries do not have resources even to pay salaries of public administrators, to expect them to provide benefits to conservators of diversity and developers of innovations  is not a realistic goal. If private or public or cooperative sector has to share the benefits, they should obviously make profits. IPRs do play a significant role in generating these profits. However, very broad patents like the one in the case of Transgenic cotton ( which was later rescinded) are neither in the interest of science nor business efficiency in the long term.

So far as sustainable technologies are concerned such as herbal pesticides, growth regulators, vegetative dyes etc.,. South  can provide technologies to North. But if such innovations are used without appropriate reciprocities, then the knowledge systems which produced these innovations will not last very long. It is true that poor people in third world may be creative an innovative but they can not afford costly attorneys. A systems has to be evolved to provide this help through public interest institutions or initiatives. Inventor assistance programs like the ones tried by Franklin Law Pierce Centre should be tried out at global scale and in many countries immediately. 

17.	Knowledge Network for sustainable technological options operationalised through Honey Bee network approach implies that innovations in one part of the world, may seek or attract investments from another part, if necessary, to generate enterprises (whether commercial or non commercial, individual or cooperative) in third place. Several innovative experiments have been started to explore this Golden Triangle of Creativity (Fig one) in institutional context so that policy framework also becomes favourable for such tie ups across the world—a serious handicap in most developing countries despite WTO. 

Golden Triangle for rewarding creativity thus requires acknowledging that not all innovators may have the potential for becoming entrepreneurs or have access to investible capital. One could have an innovation say from India, investor from Europe and enterprise in South Africa.  Forces of globalization could after all be also mobilized in defense of poor creative people.

18.	Gujarat Government recently joined hands with SRISTI (Society for Research and initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions) and colleagues from IIMA (Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad) and other civil society NGOs like SEWA, Gopal Dham etc., and public sector corporations, to set up GIAN (Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network). Incidentally, GIAN in Sanskrit means Knowledge. The idea is to convert innovations into products and services diffused through commercial or non commercial channels with in or among the regions and countries.

19.	Honey Bee Data base with thousands of innovations is also being upgraded to multi-media capabilities so that barriers of languages, literacy, and localism  are overcome to connect innovators, potential entrepreneurs,  and investors across regions. Idea is that using the electronic, textual and oral media, a multi level, language, node network must be put in place so that individual as well as collective grassroots innovations get documented, experimented, disseminated and rewarded in material as well as non material manner (see figure Two).

20.	The linkage between survival strategies, Knowledge systems, Knowledge network and sustainable livelihoods has been shown in figure two. Contemporary as well as traditional innovations are scouted, screened for experimentation for value addition or dissemination as such and are then rewarded through various material and non material incentives for individuals as well as for collectives. The policy support at macro as well as micro level becomes important for conversion of innovation into products and eventually into sustainable resource use pattern.  The networking of various strategies, actors, and institutions through Knowledge Network leads to sustainable livelihoods apart from mechanisms for conservation of resources and knowledge around it.  

21.	One of the major bottleneck has been the insularity of formal research system towards informal innovations. The Research stations or laboratories dedicated and designed to work under the leadership of knowledge rich economically poor people are yet to come up. R and D for the Poor can not be just an attempt of the ‘appropriate technology’ kind or some other variants of sub optimal solution. The best of the formal and informal sector have to join hands to compete in the market place. Some initial steps have been taken in this regard in India but much more remains to be done. 

22.	Much is said about participatory research and millions are spent in augmenting capacity of formal institutions to ‘learn from people’ (unfortunately using short cut methods which are neither accountable nor ethically very sound or even scientifically very efficient). However, not even pennies are spent (exceptions apart) in augmenting the capacity of innovators themselves to do research, take risks, and generate new enterprises themselves or through partnership with other entrepreneurs. We perhaps, do not have a single Venture Capital Fund for tiny and small innovations in any developing country. SRISTI and GIAN have taken the first step but a great deal more remains to be done.

23.	The outstanding aspect of most of grassroots innovations is that these are also often green. Thus we are talking about establishing GREEN GIANs all over the world  and help transfer technologies from south to north to trigger sustainable future for biodiversity poor western societies as well as for financial capital starved developing countries.

I have discussed in this note what is possible and has been done on pilot scale in India in creating Knowledge Network linking grassroots Innovations, Enterprises, Investments in an institutional context so that process is self renewing and self supporting. Green technologies such as herbal pesticides, herbal drugs for animal and humans, vegetative dyes, organic agricultural products, small machines, non violent castor leaf based eri-silk, etc., are only some of the ideas on which Honey Bee data base is very rich and which have formed the basis for GIAN to take off. I have no doubt that a paradigm shift is in the offing. Much maligned markets will not work for the poor unless consumers and other civil society actors articulate their vision and support for green innovations. Markets after all only provide a platform for exchange to take place between demand and supply. If certain demands are not cleared or supplies are not organized, obviously the involved transaction costs are a major barrier. State and civil society institutions have to over come these barriers so that the resource in which poor are rich, i.e. their knowledge becomes the  fundamental building block of future transformation of societies in South but also in North.

GIAN can green the world through south to north transfer of technologies. The aid policies must change towards fairer trade in knowledge and other resources of the poor. Poor are obviously not so poor that they can not even think, create and transform the world around them. Challenge is to recognize poverty of our imagination and conceptual tools that fail to recognize, respect and reward grassroots innovations.

Summing Up:

Information Technologies like any other technology can help bridge as well as widen the gaps between haves and have nots. What is very encouraging about the new possibilities that IT trends offer is the scope for democratizing knowledge which was never so high as now. Many colleagues at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad ( Patel, 1979-84, Madhavan, 1983, Kaul, 1981,1982, Bhatnagar,1982-93. Rao and Khanna, 1984, Rao, 1994,  Jajoo, Jain, Ramani, 1993-6 etc.,) have explored applications of IT in a vast range of social applications such as planning of location of primary schools, optimization of rural roads network, realignment of irrigation canals, management support systems for backward area planning and district planning, updating of land records, management of public distribution systems etc.,

There have been other studies on MIS for drought area planning and park management and many other areas of social applications.

And yet some crucial areas of interface between formal and informal knowledge systems have remained out of institutional reckoning. It is noted that indigenous innovations have inspired search for sustainable solutions in formal systems for centuries and yet their  property rights over their knowledge creations have still not been recognized. Key initiatives that are being taken by us and can be up scaled through cooperation of others are:

1.	Institutionalizing INSTAR (International Network for Sustainable Technological Applications and Registration) through a quick, low barrier, easily accessible registration systems for traditional knowledge as well as contemporary innovations. How else incentives for disclosure of local knowledge can be created for individuals and communities?

2.	We must recognize that small enterprises, innovators and investors all around the world suffer from same constraints. Their transaction costs are so high in scouting each other and building partnerships. Setting up Venture capital funds for small innovations which SRISTI took initiatives for a year ago and which Gujarat Government helped set up on March1, 1997 in the form of GIAN ( Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network). Idea is to convert innovations into products so that green innovations are disseminated widely helping in making transition of our society towards a more fair, equitable and sustainable society. Innovators, Investors, and Entrepreneurs around the world have to be brought together through Knowledge Network/Centers to be created through a chain of multi-media, multi level, and multi-node points of gathering and disseminating knowledge ( Gupta, 1995). 

3.	The Knowledge Networks around grassroots innovations have to include opportunities for innovators to scale up their innovations with or without commercialization. This essentially mean a network of experimental farms and laboratories which IT will help network.

4.	Multi-Media data bases as created by Honey Bee Network ( largest network of grassroots innovations) will help in overcoming the barriers of languages, literacy and localism. Farmers innovators can connect to each other without having to suffer from isolation due to technological or language barriers if kiosks of IT nodes can be created around the world in rural areas. With solar technology, as Cyril Belshaw tells me, it is possible for remote points to be connected at very low costs without having to wait for power lines to be laid or telephone booths to be created. The problem of clouds will remain and so will remain the need for long lasting rechargeable batteries. 
But this can be done if we decide to give it priority.

5.	Conservation through augmenting creativity is what Honey Bee network has been popularizing in more than 75 countries around the world for last eight years. How can we have a system which makes it possible for creative communities and individuals around the world to connect to each other. IT has not done it but can it do it? The answer will depend upon not on our technological prowess but on ethical and value concerns. Let us recalibrate our campuses so that these point towards the right direction—the direction of knowledge rich and economically poor people.

Select References to Our Work:

Gupta Anil K, Survival   Under  Stress:  Socio   Ecological  Perspective on Farmers’ Innovation  and  Risk Adjustments, W.P. No. 738,  1988,  International   Congress   on Plant Physiology, New Delhi,1988., revised version published in Capitalism, Nature and Socialism,5,1990, 79-96.

———————, Sustainable Institutions for Natural Resource Management:  How do we participate in people’s plans?  1995, published by APDC in People’s Initiatives for Sustainable Development:  Lessons of Experience (Eds., Syed Abdus Samad, Tatsuya Watanabe and Seung-Jin Kim), Chapter 15, pp.341-373.Kualalumpur:APDC

(With Kirit K Patel, A.R.Pastakia and P.G.Vijaya Sherry Chand) Building Upon Local Creativity and Entrepreneurship in Vulnerable Environments, published in Empowerment for Sustainable Development: Towards Operational Strategies (Ed.Vangile Titi and Naresh Singh), Nova Scotia, Canada; Fernwood Publishing Limited; New Jersey, Zed Books Limited, 1995. 

————————, Sustainability Through Biodiversity:  Designing Crucible of Culture, Creativity and Conscience.  Presented at International Conference on Biodiversity and Conservation held at Danish Parliament, Copenhagen, November 8, 1991.  IIMA Working Paper No.1005.

————————, Knowledge Centre/Network: Building Upon What People Know, presented at the IFAD’s International Conference on Hunger & Poverty in Brussels during November 16-23, 1995.

————————,( 1996 a) The Honey Bee Network:  Voices from Grassroots Innovators, Cultural Survival Quarterly, Spring 1996, pp.57-60.

————————( 1996 b) Rewarding Creativity for Conserving Diversity in Third World:  Can IPR Regime Serve the Needs of Contemporary and Traditional Knowledge Expertsand Communities in Third World?  Paper presented in AIPPI Forum (Sep 10-14, 1996) on Ethical and Ecological Aspects of IPRs, Interlaken, Switzerland on 13 Sep, 1996, IIMA WP No.1339, November 1996.

————————,(Gipta 1996, c) Getting Creative Individuals and Communities Their Due: Framework for Operationalizing Article 8J and 10C.  Draft paper invited by CBD Secretariat.

(With Kirit K Patel, et al) Participatory Research: Will the Koel Hatch the Crow’s Eggs, paper presented in the International Seminaro on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis for Technology Development, organized by CIAT, Colombia. 

(With Kirit K Patel) Turning Things Upside Down:  Creativity and Innovations at Grassroots, International Conference, January 1997, published in Forests, Trees and People, Newsletter No.31, September 1996.

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