As a child, Dipankar spent several years exploring abandoned toys and broken gadgets. He always had the urge to make something out of scrap by fixing it. In his teenage, he saw his parents doing hardships in the fields, and he decided to do something for them. Dipankar Das, a little boy from Andaman saw his parents working in the fields and involved in activities like carrying extremely heavy materials on their heads and using tools for various activities. He saw how his parents' skin on hands used to suffer bruises due to work, and how the mandatory work of husk threshing, became much painful with bruised hands. And this was the time when Dipankar thought about using different methods to ease his parent’s work.

In 2015, Dipankar created a ‘solar-powered pulse thresher’ to lower his parents' workload and to assure their hands got some comfort. Thresher is a farm equipment that removes the seeds from the husks and stalks. The solar-powered thresher worked without a drop of fossil fuel and can also be used to thresh pulses, horse grain, and grams. Moreover, this creation declined the time and labor expected for the threshing and lent some extra time to his parents for other activities. After creating his first model to help his parents and other workers Dipankar hasn't looked back.

Dipankar believes in utilizing simple techniques to relieve the hardships, and he makes these models help the farmers and laborers. Dipankar takes advantage of his ‘jugaad’ and innovates multiple solutions for all kinds of farming-related jobs. To reduce the pressure in the head and neck of workers while carrying the heavy loads, he assembled a wired system with cushions around it, which will transmit half weight to the shoulders, and it will automatically lower the pressure on the head and neck of the workers.

Dipankar's mother and other women of his village used to walk miles to carry water. And when Dipankar saw his mother and other women in the community carry water on their heads, he created a wheeled trolley to make the task easier. When Dipankar observed the fishermen's problem of preserving fresh fish from the ocean to the market, he designed a solar-powered deep freezer for the fishermen. 

Dipankar's amazing innovations are everywhere in his community. From a pencil holder to a hand-operated blower for stoves or chulhas. During the COVID 19 lockdown period, Dipankar claims that he came up with around 18 innovations. He has created a solar-powered hand washing system, a coconut collecting machine, a long-poled cutter, and a color-coded thermometer to recognize naturally and artificially matured fruits and so on. He has recently developed an interactive panel for children learning new letters and words associated with it. He believes that making the learning method interactive boosts the joy and willingness to learn.

All the models that Dipankar makes are made from used materials or scrap. He never asks for money to utilize his creations. He worked in food stalls and did labor work with his parents before attending school, he did many jobs to fund his education.

Dipankar says that “We may be poor, but we are not hungry”, and that's what makes him feel blessed about himself.

He always thinks about innovative solutions to every problem in his life. Dipankar says, “I like to learn and I can go to any extent when it comes to learning. When I was in college, I used to sit in other classes. During holidays, I used to work at people's houses, even cleaned their toilets, worked in hotels. I have been working since childhood”.

He believes that innovation is something that can be beneficial to our daily lives. Dipankar's remarkable innovations were facilitated by late former president Pranab Mukharjee. Dipankar has won multiple state-level awards including the IGNITE Award in 2015, a very prestigious award given to school children for innovations.

This 22-years-old has recently moved to Ahmedabad to study Mechanical Engineering. Besides, he is learning coding, machine learning, and how to produce smartphone applications. He aims to integrate two different sciences and make something new. Dipankar Das from Andaman desires to finish off his studies first, as he is learning a lot and processing several things in his mind. And he says, “I want to be a scientist. The young generation should do what they want. It doesn't matter if you get 1st division or 2nd division or hold a degree in science or arts, what matters is that what you are capable of doing”. Generally, people raise a question for children to make their parents proud, but Dipankar genuinely wishes his parents to feel proud of him and his remarkable innovations in the future.

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Reference: 

https://thestoriesofchange.com/

http://nif.org.in/