INDIAN INNOVATION WINS GOLD ASIAN INNOVATION AWARD
Press Release -Far Eastern Economic Review
To News Editors
November 10, 1999
For Immediate Release
Hong Kong, November 10, 1999--A retired Indian civil engineer who has found a cheap and environmentally sound solution to provide water all year-round to farmers in India's remotest regions is the overall winner in this year's Asian Innovation Award, the Far Eastern Economic Review announces in its November 18 issue, available tomorrow.
The Awards, in association with DuPont, honour companies and individuals in Asia who come up with new ideas, methods or technologies or apply existing knowledge in a way that improves quality of life and enhances productivity.
Irrigation water in most parts of Ladakh depends more on nature than on man. It often comes from melting glaciers. In order to provide an alternative to dependence on the fickleness of nature to his fellow Ladakhis, 62-year-old Chewang Norphel harnesses nature itself by building artificial glaciers to trap and freeze water.
At the onset of winter, water from a stream or river is diverted along a large wall made from locally gathered rocks at the foot of a mountain. This water is then channelled through inch-thick pipes to an area shaded from the harsh mountain sun. Here it accumulates in a large pool. The pipes reduce the speed of the water's flow, and as the temperature drops, the water freezes to form thick sheets of ice. Come summer, this water melts and is channelled to the fields, reducing farmers' dependence on natural glacier melts.
So far, Norphel has created five such artificial glaciers, each at the cost of about $3,500. A typical artificial glacier, says Norphel, is about 600 feet long and 150 feet wide, and can collect as much as 6 million gallons of water. He says that after losses through seepage and evaporation, as much as half of this water can reach a village about four kilometres away.
A typical glacier, says Norphel can benefit three or four villages, or about 1,500 farmers. They are particularly useful in Ladakh, he explains, since the short sowing season begins and ends before the bulk of natural glacier melt water begins to flow to the region. "This is an example of what appropriate technology can do for Ladakh," says Ghulam Nabi Galwan, a resident of Leh, the capital of Ladakh.
Norphel's funding comes from the government of India and most of his glaciers are being built with the help of a Ladakh-based non-governmental organization called the Leh Nutrition Project. The price tag, says Norphel, is about a tenth of what it would cost to build a reservoir with similar storage capacity. This year, Norphel says he plans to build another five glaciers. He says that other villagers are building another 10.
All that is required to build an artificial glacier are easily available mountain rocks and the pipes used to channel the water. Norphel's glaciers require no specialized skills, and are usually built by 10-12 local villagers working under Norphel's direction.
Norphel hopes that solving Ladakh's water problem may slow the emigration of young people to the plains. He says this emigration is slowly extinguishing the local culture of the region. By improving the economic viability of farms, Norphel hopes to sustain village communities and preserve the ancient Buddhist heritage of his people.
"We need to be less dependent on nature," he says. "Only then can farming offer jobs to our young people."
If he gets enough funding, Norphel would like to dot Ladakh's arid mountains with 100 of his artificial glaciers. "This is only the beginning," he says.
Other Asian Innovation Awards Gold Winners are an Australian research team for a sun and wind-powered boat and Japanese company Toshiba for a carbon-dioxide absorbing ceramic.
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The 1999 Asian Innovation Awards
Introduction and List of Judges
Gold Awards
Artificial Glaciers
INDIA
Solar Boat
AUSTRALIA
Carbon-Dioxide Absorbing Ceramic
JAPAN
Silver Awards
Translation Software
JAPAN
Silk Bullet-Proof Vests
THAILAND
Removable Ink
JAPAN
Bronze Awards
Dye-Based Weedkiller
JAPAN
Rural Internet
INDONESIA
Web-Site 'Sticky' Notes
SINGAPORE
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Introduction and List of Judges
INTRODUCTION
The Winners
Technology has become the buzzword for every sort of change, from how we do business to the way we use a telephone. But instead of allowing themselves to be caught up in technological change for its own sake, the winners of this year's Asian Innovation Awards have shown concern for broader categories of change that will help improve the quality of life. The high marks awarded environmental innovations for the second year in a row speak volumes about the challenges to growth beyond high-technology.
Our independent panel of judges considered 33 nominations and scored them on a scale of 0 to 5 (higher marks were better). Each nomination was judged on its own merits rather than in competition with other nominations. That was done to ensure that individuals, non-profit organizations and small companies had just as much chance of winning as multinational corporations with giant research budgets.
The REVIEW then tallied the judge's scores to produce the rankings. Altogether there are nine awards, divided among gold, silver and bronze categories. The overall winner? An artificial glacier from Ladakh in the Subcontinent. Inventor Chewang Norphel scored 23 points out of a possible 25 for his simple application of natural climatic changes in helping to resolve water shortages in the cold and arid farmlands of the Himalayas. It's perhaps surprising to see something so rudimentary clinch the top ranking, but as awards judge Chia-Wei Woo, president of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, points out, not all innovations have to be complex and expensive. "A simple inexpensive innovation that reduces farmer's dependence on nature provides a good model for thinkers and planners in developing countries," he says.
Gold-award winners come from India, Japan and Australia this year. Japan dominates the winning nominations overall, but significantly there are winners from Indonesia, Thailand and Singapore, suggesting that the economic crisis that hit Southeast Asia with such ferocity has not dampened the spirit of innovation.
The Judges
A. Gopalakrishnan
Director
Engineering Staff College of India
Hyderabad, India
Steve Hsieh
Vice-Chairman
National Science Council
Taiwan
Raj Mitta
Managing Director, Southeast Asia
Arthur D. Little
Singapore
Chia-Wei Woo
President
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
HongKong
Shan Han Yao
President
Shanghai Institute of Economic Development
China |
