[Stoves] What will people pay for a stove?

[Sarath GUTTIKUNDA]

I am forwarding an email from a friend to the development cafe mailing list
(in India) regarding the "can technology end poverty" article in boston
review. I thought some of the points were general enough to share here.

--
Dr. Sarath Guttikunda, New Delhi, India
www.urbanemissions.info | TED Fellow | +91 9891315946
http://www.dri.edu/People/Sarath.Guttikunda

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Mahesh Vee <veemahesh at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 30, 2010 at 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: Boston Review Forum: "Can technology end poverty?"
To: Development Cafe <development-cafe at googlegroups.com>



Interesting article. Thought would use this article to get the group
to brainstorm a bit. Below are my thoughts.

I believe the point is innovations will continue and many will fail,
from badly to miserably. Part of the reason could be innovators never
understood the users, and part could be just bad technology (cost,
utility value, relevance, etc). Humans were not born with using
computers or mobile phones, but well, I can go into any village now
and find at least a bunch of users of mobile phones. The evolution, so
to say, should be towards continuing to innovate and create products,
etc working with the communities. More co-creation/innovation, and
less of lab creations or garage innovations, which is a Valley concept
and worked/works very well to the audience it caters.

We continue to use technology and it works quite effectively even in a
place like Jharkhand or Orissa. Our teams work towards moving people
towards it as it brings in higher efficiency, better accountability in
some cases, quicker access to services, cost savings, and simply
getting things done faster, cheaper and better. These are things
people in the villages’ lack, and it becomes the responsibility of the
so called innovators to educate and build capacity to use these
technologies/innovations for good. In an urban setup, innovation stops
where the product is tested and prototyped, as the customers are pre-
educated and distribution is almost at doorstep. However, I believe in
taking technology/products to rural masses, the challenge begins there
and continues through distribution, delivery and adoption. Most
problems are known, and the complexity of technology required to solve
problems is quite simple and readily available, be it solar cookers or
cook stoves, or can be developed without too much effort. The
challenges are around building awareness of use of such technologies,
capacity building so it caters to a larger audience, partnerships to
understand local needs, village level entrepreneurs to take up
servicing and maintenance, etc.

I believe most people working in this space understand technology is
an enabler (of different variance) and not the silver bullet to
solving all of world's problems. It does go through multiple
iterations before it gets stronger, but that shouldn't stop us from
experimenting it on the field. I would request other points of view
here to make the dialogue richer.

Thanks,
Mahesh
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