National Innovation Foundation has selected Agricultural Correspondent of The Hindu , M.J.Prabu for its media award for popularising grassroots innovations through the Farmers’ Notebook column of the newspaper.
The Foundation, set up by the Government of India’s Department of Science and Technology, seeks to provide institutional support in scouting, spawning, sustaining and scaling up grassroots innovations and help their transition to self-supporting activities.
Former Director General of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, R.A.Mashelkar is its Chairperson. Anil Gupta, Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and President, Society for Research and Initiatives for Sustainable Technologies and Institutions (SRISTI) is its executive Vice Chairperson.
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Complimenting Mr. Prabu, Chief Innovation Officer at the Foundation, Vipin Kumar, noted that the articles in the column on new technologies developed by the grass roots innovators had led to the commercialisation of several of them.
``Never in the last ten years, has a column in any newspaper evoked such response from all over the country that Farmers Notebook has done’’.
He also pointed out that at the recent Grassroots Innovation Awards function of the Foundation held here, where President, Pratibha Patil recognised outstanding innovators, several innovators praised the column in the feedback session.
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