Grassroots Innovation in China and India

Grassroots innovations are innovations that emerge from local traditional and informal knowledge systems, with or without blending with formal knowledge. Grassroots innovation has yet to be fully understood or exploited in China and India. This grant will support a detailed study of grassroots innovation in the context of national innovation systems in the two countries. Researchers will look at why and how some grassroots innovations evolve to a successful outcome and others do not. And, they will examine the external environment in which an innovation serves a public good, finds a market, gets scaled up or otherwise finds expression as a socially and economically valued product. The overall premise is that national innovation systems can only benefit the poor and other excluded sections of society when they do not rely entirely on formal science and technology (S&T) systems. Both states recognize that new ways and institutional arrangements for reducing poverty in the rural hinterland are urgently needed, and both have espoused national policies that seek to balance rapid economic growth with social equity. It is expected that the findings will provide input toward these goals.