The Hindu Business Line : Grassroots inventor

Such is his passion for his dream product, that he has spent Rs 75,000 of his own on it. He works as a cable line operator to support himself, while devoting most of his time and energy to his innovation.

Anand Krishnaswamy

In the popular children’s fable, the three little pigs were saved from the wolf who, although it huffed and puffed with all its might, couldn’t blow their house down. It was made of bricks.

Yes, bricks are tough, and it is equally tough work making them. Naturally occurring clay is first dug up and mixed with water for the right consistency. This is moulded into the shape using a frame and dried in the sun. Later the moulds are baked in a kiln to turn into the red bricks used in construction. It is backbreaking manual labour, with a working couple earning on average Rs 400 for every 1,000 bricks they make. And yes, there is a great deal of huffing and puffing involved.

J. Meganathan of Pinayur village in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, hopes to make a difference by helping mechanise brick manufacture.

A two-hour bumpy drive outside Chennai takes you to Pinayur village. This is brick kiln country. Meganathan lives here with his four siblings and parents. His family has been in the brick-making business since 1980.

A history graduate from Chengelpet Arts College, Meganathan initially worked as a machine operation assistant at a company producing water packets. Slowly he learnt to handle the manufacturing and, later, the servicing of these machines.

Using this experience he produced his first innovation: a pickle packet making machine which, however, did not succeed due to a combination of factors — stiff competition from other players in the market, and lack of funds and technical knowledge.

However, the insights he gained from this experience proved crucial when he embarked on his second innovation: a brick-making machine.

Starting in 2003, with material salvaged from scrapyards and other parts that he bought, he has built three prototypes so far, each an improvement on the previous one. Such is his passion for his dream product, that he has spent Rs 75,000 of his own on it. He works as a cable line operator to support himself, while devoting most of his time and energy to his innovation. The family also owns some agricultural land on which it grows sugarcane, groundnut, and rice.

The current version of his brick-maker is attached to a tractor and runs on its power. The desired quantity of wet clay is placed on a loading tray; using pneumatic power a predetermined amount is lowered into a rectangular grid, which shapes the bricks. The tractor is then moved forward and the process repeated for the next row of bricks; the moulded bricks are then sun-dried and baked.

Grassroots innovators like Meganathan face challenges at every step of converting an idea to a prototype and finally the refined product. Not being an engineer, he did not know how to design the machine to accurate dimensions. The grade of clay to be used was also a challenge. And as he explains: “If I didn’t have to worry about money, I would have had so much more freedom to think and come up with newer designs.”

He has been supported in his efforts by The Lemelson Recognition & Mentoring Programme (L-RAMP), a project jointly run by Rural Innovations Network and the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, with funding provided by The Lemelson Foundation, a private philanthropy based in the US. The project aims to identify innovations that have the potential to transform the lives of the poor, and to support such innovations to become scaleable enterprises, with benefits going back to the innovator.

Besides funds, Meganathan also received mentoring from technical experts to take his idea forward. He is also being supported to transfer his technology to a manufacturer, so that the machine may be produced in large enough numbers to create the social impact that he desires. Asked why he had taken on so many risks and struggles to work on his dream project, he replied that he derived a great deal of satisfaction from analysing a real-world problem and attempting to come up with a practical solution. “Only when you like what you are doing, can you get good results,” he says.

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