Innovating in India

Rajiv Bajaj, the Big Boss of Bajaj Auto once remarked that innovating in India is equivalent to "MAD IN INDIA." He couldn’t have been more right.

In the last few months of building the prototypes of our shallow water boat motors, we are stumbling against every single obstacle possible; both those envisaged and others we couldn’t even imagine.

The 3d scans all came with skewed geometry, necessitating manual remeasurement and rectification. Every bearing housing was either too tight or loose, the same with the shafts. Most aluminium casting shops refused right away to make sample pieces and the one that finally took the job neither sieved the sand nor removed the dross, resulting in pockmarked casts with black spots, but blamed our 3d-printed patterns for their bad quality casts.

While trying to get the gears made, one irritated Sardarji remarked that they don't have time to make one-off pieces (that's just normal spur gears), besides he couldn't guarantee the required precision. So I asked him what kind of gears do they make to which he gruffly replied "for Lathe machines". Which partially explained why all our machined parts were slightly off. Another gear cutting workshop owner after promising to build us two samples, did a complete about-turn after I gave him a sample to replicate, claiming that he needs a minimum order of 50 units at a cost 4 times higher than if imported from China.

Virtually everyone had to be cajoled into doing their jobs because they all claimed that they are only interested in large production orders. Thus, the clutch is yet to arrive after two months of ordering and making full payment and the same is with several other parts. And the most insulting part is being universally regarded as a rich nut-case with money to burn on a frivolous project or alternately a poor time-waster. So much for #atmanirbharta #india #innovations

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