No its not the name of the new car from TATA motors, although the name resembles the name of the car, it is not any lesser innovative than the TATA nano. Be it the application space or the price competitiveness. On February 17 2009, Santosh Ostwal, the son of a farmer, took to the stage at Nokia’s ‘Call Innovators Challenge’ in Barcelona. He was showcasing his invention, Termed Nano Ganesh, this application enables farmers to check availability of power to their irrigation systems.

A modem, which coupled with a mobile phone, is connected to the starter mechanism of the ubiquitous water pump, making the long march of the farmers to their water pumps in remote locations unnecessary. The modem interfaces a 440 volt system, is attached to the starter panel of the pump set. The device helps a farmer to switch on/off the pumpset through a call made by a mobile or a land line phone or even a PCO phone from anywhere in the world. The remote access eliminates the need to travel, sometimes long distances in inclement weather, to check the power and turn on/off the pumps.

On the deployment of the system, a pre-set code is given to the farmer to switch on/off the pumpset. In order to switch on the set a farmer has to call up the number of the mobile phone attached in the starter panel. One can confirm the availability of the power in the pumpset by a long beep sound, which will be signaled from the receiving end during the call Followed by the confirmation of availability of the power, the caller has to dial a preset code provided for the user to switch on the pump set. Once the code is dialed the user has to confirm his function by a feedback tone and then cut the call. For switching off the pump set, the same process has to be repeated and a different preset code is entered to switch off the pumpset.

To make the phones easily accessible to the farmer community, Santosh deployed basic phones like Nokia 1100. The modem is also available with a theft proof inbuilt device called ‘Nano Ganesh Hanuman’, whereby its installation will also ensure alert in case of theft attempt near the pump area related to pumpset cable, panel or pump itself.

Tata Indicom is the first operator in the country to partner Ossian Agro to offer remote access to irrigation pumps using a mobile phone Nano Ganesh – a radical move to save electricity, time, money and resources like water. At the moment available only in Gujrat this innovation will soon make its way into the rest of the country. Priced between Rs.560 and Rs.1700, about 5,000 farmers are using the application.

Suddenly, the landscape seems to be changing as dozens of homegrown incubators across the country’s many technology institutes are churning out international talent. Tech schools across the country are waking up from Fabian fatalism to can-do optimism. This cannot be wrong for the country that has been termed historically as the sleeping tiger.

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