Harnessing the traditional wisdom and skills of grassroot innovators
It is observed over the years that the local innovators never get the kind of support or sponsorship for empowering them to carry out with their innovative research and experimentations. Hence, a thrust was given to build up a research and development action to continue with improvising the existing models of slow moving vehicles by involving grassroots innovators and incorporating local knowledge. As part of this initiative, an indigenous innovator named Mr Karuna Kanta Kaliita, President’s National Innovation Award winner had been engaged to back his credentials in the R&D wing of STED Project in an experimental basis for a couple of months.

During his engagement, a new chain & gear stem for the existing Rickshaw model was developed, which had considerably improved the efficiency of the existing model. In this new design, in lieu of the traditional single chain system with a single crank, a DOUBLE CHAIN SYSTEM using 2(two) cranks, 2(two) sprockets and 2(two) Chain-systems has been developed, which could be effortlessly introduced in the existing model of the Rickshaw Bank for enhancing its efficiency.

This new chain system has been fixed to a rickshaw and several road tests conducted with independent rickshaw pullers on the street. The volunteers were selected at random, and were allowed to ride the vehicle to test its efficiency. 80% of them expressed satisfaction with this new chain system, and told that the riding effort becomes less while the gear system transfers the pedalling from one chain system to the other, and same speed and carrying loads are maintained. The end-result is found positive as the technical aspect of this collaboration is concerned.