The team took on a very important but challenging problem of picking cotton manually from bolls by laborers. They focused more on increasing the efficiency of manual labor instead of mechanizing the process of cotton picking . Since this was not the season of growing cotton, they couldn’t get firsthand experience of interacting with laborers and testing their prototype. However they had the opportunity to interact with two innovators Natubhai and Mansukhbhai, who have given their life for reducing the drudgery of laborers and making machines for picking and stripping cotton from bolls respectively. Both the innovators after multiple trials and iterations came up with their machines. The team worked in the workshop of NatubhaiWadher to make a small model of their idea for demonstration.

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One of the factors discouraging the cultivation of indigenous varieties of cotton such as V 797 is the tedious post-harvesting process of removing cotton from unopened and semi-opened shells. Picking of cotton in hybrid varieties is easier because the bolls in the hybrid varieties open up at harvesting stage and sometimes the cotton even falls on the ground. The V 797 variety is extensively grown in many rainfed semi-arid parts of North Gujarat. The shells are removed manually before the cotton is sold to factories for ginning and pressing. While most families do it on their own, a few earn their living out of this job. A large number of old-people, women and children contribute to this labour (Honey Bee, 8(2):3-4, 1997).

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One of the team members, Mr Bhargava Reddy comes from a family of cotton farming and hence he took this problem to work on during the summer school. Even though the team couldn’t come out with a working prototype, they got good insights of the process and feedback from mentors which will help them to build on their problem and make a prototype in the future.

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“Design process is so detailed that we have got inputs, ideas and feedbacks from multiple directions. It would never have been easy without the design process. We would have never got to the prototyping stage”- Mr Bhargava Reddy

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Feedback by Prof Anil Gupta: Major breakthrough in their problem statement is that even they are thinking of mechanism which can pick up cotton bolls and put it in bag. Focussing on affordability of farmers and efficiency of labourers. In case of complete mechanisation, judgement of labourers is not there, thus efficiency can be compromised. Productivity, quality, efficiency might be higher in this machine.

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A very important aspect of this summer school was the process of in context immersion, which involves meeting people where they live, work and socialize and then immersing yourself in their context getting new insights and opportunities . Most of the teams that went on to field in and around Ahmedabad city underwent this process. This team got the opportunity to work with the innovator who had felt this pain himself before the dawn of a Cotton boll picking machine could come to him. Natubhai’s father had eighty acres of land. It was difficult for him to employ labourers for the entire farm and hence he used to support the labourers in plucking cotton from the fields. He noticed the labour shortage during the cotton picking season despite having a big team of sincere and committed labourers. Once while doing his work, the idea of making a machine to do the job crossed his mind .

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“I could not bear to see the problems of my father and other villagers. A lot of cotton use to get wasted. A machine would certainly make the job easier.” – Natubhai R Wadher

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So Samvedana “not only feeling the pain of others, but to take the pain on oneself and find

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solutions” is something which drove Mr Bhargava to take up this challenge during this summer school. This was highlighted by the team in their problem sensed definition:

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Cotton picking is done mostly by hands in India primarily by women. The main problem occurs in picking stage due to repetitive motion of hands, standing posture in hot conditions throughout the day. There are machines available in the market to harvest the cotton however these machines are not suitable for Indian context. This causes very serious health hazards like cutting hands, exposure to higher temperatures, bruises, back pain, heavy load carried by them. It also requires loads of time picking one boll at a time. This time can be well utilized to perform other tasks to live a better life. The load carried by them is usually more than 10 Kgs. This is a bag which is tied to their hip or carried in their hands. Workers go to fields in the morning to start picking and continuously work till the afternoon, after lunch they work till the evening. Basically an average person picks around 20-30 Kgs a day, that makes their wage not more than INR 200.

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One of our team member’s has personally experienced this problem as his parents are in farming. He took it as a challenge and put forward his problem statement.

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Source: Final report submitted by Mr Bharagava Reddy, rakeshChoudhary and Ravi Sonkriya

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http://www.ideo.com/images/uploads/hcd_toolkit/IDEO_HCD_ToolKit.pdf

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http://nif.org.in/innovation/cotton_ball_picking_machine/462

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https://www.saddahaq.com/anil-gupta-at-uoh-sense-the-unmet-needs-of-society

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Understanding the problem

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Since only one team member had experienced the problem firsthand, the other two had to understand the problem and review the challenges in the current method of picking and also what is the need to design?

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The team started with understanding the process and in which part the problem arises and how. They were first confused as to how to start, but with some literature review and session on problem mapping by Prof Shashank Mehta (NID), they did brainstorming and came up with analysis of the process.

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Analysis of each step:

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Sowing seeds: Sowing of seeds is done by hand. It is a repetitive process of bending, putting the seed in the soil and covering the seed with soil. This often causes severe back pain & other muscle pains. Although there are many machines available in the market they often displace the seed causing the plant to grow in the undesired location.

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Irrigation:In this process the plant is watered, protected from pesticides and nurtured with fertilizers. During this process women & children are exposed to chemical fertilizers.

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