A new textile which has been created on the premise that “if you can cool the person rather than the building where they work or live” it will save energy, might keep people cool without AC  

By designing a terracotta incinerator, costing just one tenth of the incinerator that runs on electricity, Shyamsunder Bedekar of Gujarat has ushered in a revolution in women’s hygiene in rural and semi-rural areas, says Kavita Kanan Chandra

Overhearing a home tutor’s physics lecture to his son, Ashis Paul of Grey Dhaka designed a cooling devise, bringing relief to poor Bangladeshis reeling under heat without power, says G Singh

Thailand may help India tackle its sanitation crisis with its four toilet-related innovations that have harnessed technology to solve the problem of untreated waste, says Bajinder Pal Singh

A ‘solar power tree’, developed by a government laboratory, takes just four square feet of space but produces power for five households. It looks like a tree that can be squeezed on rooftops

A flood early warning system that saved countless lives in Nepal when it transmitted messages about the rising water levels in the Ratu Khola can be replicated in Bihar’s Kosi, says Imran Khan

Bhungroo in Gujarati means a hollow pipe. But Biplab Ketan Paul gave the word a new meaning by an innovation that has led to water availability, soil improvement and women empowerment, thus helping 14,000 farmers, says Kavita Kanan Chandra

A simple innovation has helped women farmers of Jharkhand, where parboiled rice is the staple food. The technology by an NGO has cut down wastage of paddy during parboiling, says Saadia Azim

The innovation by Uttam Banerjee is a godsend to the country that needs to go in for water conservation in a big way. Fitting Zerodor, a polymeric wall, to ceramic urinals would save 50,000 to 1,51,000 litres of water, says Narendra Kaushik

‘Borewell robot’ that can save children from borewells will now be used by fire service and NDRF. Its innovator, a former plumber, built it after his son escaped death, says P C Vinoj Kumar

A family car, a pickup truck, a mini-generator and more - all rolled into one for a genre called Personal Utility Vehicle. Partho Burman checks out the one of a kind vehicle, Multix MX, that’s been launched to meet the needs of entrepreneurs 

From a ‘crying bed’ that alerts mom to change baby’s diaper to ‘auto-safe’ helmet making distress call in the event of an accident, Rudra Narayan Mukherjee has fabricated a plethora of devices from a tin-roof lab, says Santosh H K Narayan

Two men in Mizoram have together fabricated a machine that strips bamboo and also makes splints. In the northeastern state, where bamboo grows in abundance, the innovation has made life much easier for local people, says Kavita Kanan Chandra

Designing a trash bin with streetlight and CCTV camera took 15-year-old Priyanka Mathikshara to Rashtrapati Bhavan for an 'In-residence scheme for writers/artists/innovators', with 13 others

After running a Tata Ace pick-up truck on coconut oil for one year, scientists in Kerala want to commercialise the biofuel that has proved to give better mileage than diesel, says Sanu George