President Patil for grassroot level innovations to tackle climate change

With the world's attention focused on the outcome of the Copenhagen summit, innovators at the grassroot level can help provide answers to climate change, president Pratibha Patil said today.

"World attention is focused on the outcome of the Copenhagen conference. I think our grassroot local innovations can be useful not only for national problems but also for world problems and answers for our second Green Revolution and climate change," Patil said.

The president said it was not necessary that hi-tech facilities were required for an innovation.

"It is a fallacy to think that innovation is a high-end activity that takes place only in sophisticated laboratories. Innovation is a wide ranging term that could mean a technological innovation, a fresh way of management or a different way of doing the same task, but which would result in better performance," she said addressing the fifth National Grassroots Innovation Awards ceremony here.

She said innovation could also be a result of accumulation of the collective knowledge of a civilisation and stressed upon the need to preserve such knowledge.

"It is important this knowledge is preserved and when used, due recognition and recompense given to the holders of traditional knowledge," she added. President Patil said the outlay for research and development in National Plans must go up manifold and "Government should embark on laying down a National Innovation Policy to bring about the much needed coordination among various initiatives in research, education, agriculture, medicine and business."

She said the quality of research should be upgraded and institutions and agencies receiving funds must be made "fully accountable."

"The results of innovation should be harnessed to become products and services for the betterment of society. This translation is often unpredictable and long drawn, requiring substantial efforts," Patil added.

She said as the World Summit on Food Security is underway in Rome to look at the worsening global food security scenario and high prices of food, the question of food security would have a fundamental bearing on the well being of the people across the world.

"I have repeatedly emphasised the urgency of a second Green Revolution in the country, in which advances of science and technology, along with innovative approaches are employed to enhance agricultural production and productivity," the president said.

Inviting the National Innovation Foundation to organise an exhibition of latest innovations at Rashtrapati Bhawan, Patil said with lakhs of children visiting the historic building, the exhibition could help generate enthusiasm in the young minds.