|
||||||||||
|
|
Indian inventor who lives in penury By Amarnath Tewary Mohammed Saidullah, a
resident of Motihari in the Indian state of Bihar, has received many awards and
trophies in the last few years for his innovation. In 1975, when his Jatwa-Janerwa
village was swamped under flood waters - an annual monsoon menace - he pleaded
with a local boatman to take him to safety. When the boatman refused to
give him space unless he paid for it, the young Saidullah looked for other ways
to tackle the floodwater. Necessity met creativity and in
just three days, he made an amphibious bicycle which could easily negotiate the
floodwaters. He modified the conventional
bicycle by adding four rectangular air floats to support it while it moved on
water. Two fan blades were attached to the spokes of the rear wheel which
enabled it to run on both water and land. The blades were arranged in
such a fashion that the cycle could be driven in reverse direction too. Shining moment Later, Mr Saidullah
demonstrated the prowess of his vehicle before a stunned crowd, which included
the then state governor, AR Kidwai, when he crossed the river Ganges in Patna
city. His big shining moment came in
January 2005 when the then Indian President, APJ Abdul Kalam, presented him
with the National Innovation Foundation's (NIF) lifetime achievement award. In the same year, he was
selected as one of the 12 finalists for the prestigious Wall Street Journal
Asian Innovation Awards. He was also profiled for the
Discovery Channel's "Beyond Tomorrow" programme. In fact, he has won so many
awards that he has lost count of them all. An impressed NIF took away his
bicycle and offered to get it patented. But three years later, Mr
Saidullah has neither got the patent nor the bicycle. Today, he lives in penury. Everyday, he pedals about 30
kms on his bicycle to sell honey so that he can feed his family of 16. But the work brings him a
paltry 1,500 rupees ($37) a month. Grinding poverty Unable to make the ends meet,
he has now put up his roadside half-thatched, half-concrete house and the small
plot of land - in Mathia Dih locality of Motihari in East Champaran district -
on sale. His disillusionment is such
that Mr Saidullah wants to return all his awards and trophies. "If you want to destroy
someone, give him an award," he says. After the bicycle, Mr Saidullah
also invented an amphibious cycle-rickshaw which he demonstrated before the BBC
team in a nearby pond. "On this, I can take my
grandchildren for a joy ride in the water," Mr Saidullah told the BBC. "But I feel hurt by what
the NIF has done to me. They used us for their promotion," he says. "May I know how many
innovators like me have been benefited and how many of us have been destroyed
by them?" asks Mr Saidullah, with pain creasing his face. NIF executive chairman, Anil
Gupta, is sympathetic to Mr Saidullah's plight: "We tried a lot, are still
trying and will keep trying to explore things being done for Mr Saidullah's
amphibious bicycle. But yes his frustration is completely understandable. "Despite our best efforts,
for some reasons we failed to generate any entrepreneurship for his bicycle.
We've given him the innovation fellowship of a fixed amount and we are ready to
support him in future too," Mr Gupta said. There is still a chance that
things may look up for him. A senior official in Bihar
state's science and technology department, Ajay Kumar, told the BBC he would do
all he could to help Mohammed Saidullah. "Though there is no
structured schemes for commercialisation of such innovations in my department
but we would certainly help him in getting his product patented after talking
with the NIF," Mr Kumar said. According to Mohammed
Saidullah's son, Mohammed Shakilurrahman, the family was not always poor. Mr
Saidullah inherited acres of land, orchards, elephants and a big house from his
father. But, the rural scientist sold
all his property to pursue his innovations, his son says. New things He blames his father's
"sheer madness" for the family's poverty. He too sells honey in the state
capital. However, Mr Saidullah's bitter
past experience has not stopped him from moving on to new things. After the amphibious bicycle,
he developed a key-operated table fan which can run non-stop for two hours, a
mini-water pump that needs no fuel and a mini-tractor which can run for two
hours on just five litres of diesel. Now, he claims he's making a
helicopter which would cost the equivalent of $62,500 and a car that would be
powered by air energy. His dark, dingy workshop is
crammed with a hand-made lathe machines and countless corroded nut-bolts
littered on long rusty iron racks. But it's his favourite place.
"I love to be here all the time," he says. Where would he go once his
house and land is sold off? "I'll make a three-storey
moving car with folding cots, pack my family in and park it on an open
government land by the roadside anywhere," he says. The maverick innovator says he
draws inspiration for his innovations from his everyday experiences. He has
named all his creations after his loving wife, Noor Jahan. "Noor means light and Inshallah a day would come when there would be light in our life too," says Saidullah. |
|||||||||
