Designed to make a difference

WaterWheel

For villagers in Porgaon village in Maharashtra's drought-hit Aurangabad district, the WaterWheel, a simple contraption consisting of a large plastic container, capable of holding 45 litres of water, and pushed along the ground by a long metal handle, is a life-altering innovation.

Last year, Habitat for Humanity India, an NGO, had distributed 500 of these WaterWheels to villagers in the district. These have brought about a sea change in the lives of women. Instead of spending hours carting water pots as they would earlier, the WaterWheel enables them to get more water in one go. It is also less tiring than lifting heavy pots and carrying them on their head. In addition, the hours and energy saved get spent in more productive activities, such as education and social welfare activities. Even the men don't mind lending a hand with the chore any longer.

The WaterWheel was devised by American social entrepreneur Cynthia Koenig over an 18 month-long "intensive human-centred design process" involving women in Rajasthan's villages. Koenig unveiled the design in 2013 at a TEDx Gateway talk in Mumbai, but it's only been a year since the WaterWheel was introduced in the market. Thousands of WaterWheels have been sold across India, and some have been exported to a few African countries since then. Habitat for Humanity now plans to distribute 100 more WaterWheels in parts of Maharashtra.

Bullet Santi

Like most low-cost rural innovations, the Bullet Santi is simplicity itself — a detachable extension fixed when needed to a motorcycle or three-wheeler that can plough, sow, harrow, spray insecticides and more. For low-income, marginal farmers, it means no expensive tractors and no recurring expense on cattle to till their land. Bullet Santi's creator, Mansukh Jagani of Mota Devaliya village in Gujarat's Amreli district, is just such a farmer who, faced with a drought in 1994, found he could no longer afford to maintain his bullocks. Despite its utility, however, no company has come forward to manufacture the Bullet Santi commercially. Instead, hundreds of small workshops in Gujarat have come forward to construct it from bits and parts of old vehicles and dismantled machinery.

Mitticool

Mansukhbhai Prajapati's terracotta refrigerator that runs without electricity is the ideal design innovation for rural India, where power supply remains uncertain. Mitticool, as the refrigerator is called, works on water's ability to cool when it evaporates. Prajapati, who belongs to the traditional potter community and now lives in Wankaner near Rajkot (Gujarat), has won a number of awards for Mitticool.

He has sold 50,000 of these at a cost of Rs5,500 for each. "Ironically, around one-third have been bought by the rich," says Prajapati. He recently came up with a smaller, 1.5-litre variant for rural dispensaries who use it to store insulin.

Solar Mosquito Destroyer 

Another winner of a national grass roots innovation award, this is an odd device, which uses the malodour of a septic tank to kill mosquitoes. Mathews K Mathew, a native of Kottayam, Kerala, spent more than a decade developing this gadget, which only works outdoors. The stink of a septic tank is transported to a receptor via a connecting pipe; mosquitoes fly in via a small inlet and get trapped. The clear glass dome traps and magnifies the sun's heat and the mosquitoes all fall dead — without any harmful repellent sprays