Look at Yerwada jail in Pune, which has about 3600 inmates. They have to make around 10000 chapathis or rotis for lunch and the same number for dinner. They apparently had a dough-making machine. A convicted inmate was very innovative, saw the process in practice then and he was not happy: Machine wasn’t working well, it was not mixing dough well and quality of rotis was not good. With his innovation, the quality and speed improved. You know, I used to talk so much about the importance of Indians patenting their inventions, that people used to refer to me as ‘patentkar’, rather than as ‘Mashelkar’. This had been known to these inmates also. So they went to the Superintendent and said some Mashelkar talks about patenting, whenever we have a new idea. So we wnt to patent this. Can we take a patent on this?’ I am told that a pune patent attorney Mr Ponkshe, who is no more, helped them! A jail inmate innovating, can one imagine! Continue reading
