IIT Delhi Launches Grassroots Innovation Programme (GRIP); Check details here

the GRIP initiative has been designed to provide physical, intellectual, and financial resources to the students to carry out these projects. To identify and find solutions, existing courses and schemes of the institute will be leveraged.

The Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (IIT Delhi) has launched ‘Grassroots Innovation Programme (GRIP)’. Principal Scientific Advisor (PSA) to the Government of India, Professor K Vijay Raghavan launched the programme on June 28 seeking to work on finding solutions to grassroots societal problems identified by the students from rural and semi-urban areas, including the communities they come from. The initiative gathered accolades from the Principal Scientific Advisor. He further expressed hope that GRIP will result in the development of several innovative solutions for society. Talking about the functioning of the programme, IIT Delhi in an official statement said, “Under this programme, students in a group will be sent to visit communities located in smaller towns and villages to immerse in social environments for a substantial time (one week to months) to study, understand and identify local needs and challenges, which can possibly be addressed by the students when they return to the Institute campus.”

Professor PVM Rao Head, Department of Design, IIT Delhi who is also coordinating the GRIP initiative said, “The immersion programme provides an opportunity for students to put themselves in the shoes of end-users and to co-create solutions which are likely to succeed. This programme also acts as a pipeline of ideas, which students and student teams can address as a part of semester-long design and innovation courses already available to them.”

After identifying the local needs and challenges, students and student teams will be allowed to work on semester-long or year-long projects on finding novel solutions to grassroots problems identified by them.

According to the official statement, the GRIP initiative has been designed to provide physical, intellectual, and financial resources to the students to carry out these projects. To identify and find solutions, existing courses and schemes of the institute will be leveraged. This way students will have an opportunity to earn academic credits for their efforts.

The programme can synergize with other programmes of the Institute, which include UBA, RUTAG, NSS, ENACTUS etc.

“There are many students who have shown interest in addressing the unmet needs in their own neighbourhoods. Further, students are enthusiastic to participate in proposing and validating novel solutions that respond to the local situation and the interests and values of the communities involved. The GRIP initiative is aimed at providing resources to the students who want to help society by solving its problems,” said Professor V Ramgopal Rao, Director, IIT Delhi said.

The statement further added, IIT Delhi and Honey Bee Network (HBN), a volunteer-based network that seeks innovative ideas and traditional knowledge produced at the grassroots level by individuals and communities and disseminates them to the wider ecosystem, have joined hands to groom students as torchbearers of social and grassroots innovation through GRIP programme.

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