Have an Idea!! National Innovation Foundation

Whereas most of the components of our education/research system do their best to curb the creativity, there are few wonderful platforms for thinkers.....

The National Innovation Foundation http://www.nif.org.in/

Sristi http://www.sristi.org/

Grassroot Innovations Augmentation Network http://www.gian.org/

These organisations are doing a wonderful job of collecting ideas from all the segments of society. The concept does not depend only on youth to study in premier institutes and research hi-tech stuff, it takes leads from experience as well to address day to day issues.

On the other hand, ever wondered about the focus area of our education system. All marks to people with best answer (of course it is taught/or can be learnt/ or atleast you know what to look for) but none for a best question (one has to experience/observe a problem or think for that, no help on this front)

Take a look at the proposition on IIT entrance exam -- Planning 70% weightage to XII marks, 30% weightage to competition. No consideration for the amount of effort required to minimize the grading differences between various education boards and no chance for average students.

One may like to see objectives of IIT Delhi at http://www.iitd.ac.in/about/index.html

Public Grievances Redressal by GoI

Some positive initiatives by GoI. These initiatives are making headlines in recent times

Public Grievances Redressal by GoI

http://pgportal.gov.in/

An online portal by GoI to highlight the problems faced by public while dealing with Government officials or departments like

• Railways

• Posts

• Telecom

• Urban Development

• Petroleum & Natural Gas

• Civil Aviation, Shipping, Road Transport & Highways

• Tourism

• Public Sector Banks

• EPFO etc.

Competition Commission of India

Hope this commission takes a cue from its European counterpart and work for the welfare of the society

http://www.cci.gov.in/

Innovative way of advertising

Ever wondered if brand related advertisements can be linked to social welfare.

Recently, KFC came up with an idea of filling up potholes on the roads of Louisville, USA with asphalt. Only thing they wanted is the permission to put KFC logo over the repaired patches of road. This way they were able to advertise while citizens got the benefit of improved infrastructure.

The following picture tells the entire story

Brian Bohannon/PRNews

Way forward: In my opinion considering the number of big advertisements and hoardings on road it is less likely to cause too much of a problem. But to ensure safety of citizens, municipality departments of various cities may take this in form of pilot projects and ensure that it is not causing inconvenience for the motorists by distracting their attention. If it is fine with motorists this may be a new trend in advertisement world.

On the other hand, Govt. authorities should frame some rules on number and size of advertisements to keep a tab on large scale graffiti on roads.

Nice initiative by RBI

We all know the importance of data resources available with the RBI and how difficult it was to gather the information from its slow website.

Finally the RBI has adopted technological advances in IT domain and designed a cool Database on Indian Economy. Major sections of the database are Reports, Queries and Data definitions.

Do checkout the database

Step1: www.rbi.org.in

Step2: Database > Database on Indian Economy