A blessing in disguise, that is what the financial constraints proved for the 21 year old Jehangir Ahmad, from Jablipora village of Bijbehara, district Islamabad (Anantnag). He came out with ‘Electrical Painting Brush’, an important innovation that brought him to limelight and fetched him the National Innovation Award at New Delhi given out by the President of India.
Jehangir’s father is a carpenter by profession and the only earning hand. He could not fulfil Jehangir’s educational needs properly. That compelled Jehangir to join some masons as a labour. This he did to support his education. Here he observed saw the difficulty of some painters working on high walls of a nearby building having to carry the paint buckets and dip the brush into the paint again and again.
 “The painters looked shabby with paint staining their bodies and clothes, plus dipping the brush again and again into the bucket resulted in the wastage of paint. I pitied them and the idea of devising an Electrical Painting Brush struck my mind”, narrates a proud Jehangir.
The Electrical Painting Brush is easy to use. It can get the job done even for big multi-storied buildings without much labour, space and time. A low power motor pumps the paint through a flexible plastic pipe, the length of which can be adjusted as per need into a specially designed painting brush which is controlled by the user with a system that controls the flow of paint through the bristles and an ON/OFF button on the handle of the brush. A prototype of this brush made by Jehangir has been successfully tested.
Jehangir right from his childhood has been innovative and interested in doing things differently. Besides he is interested in painting and writing. He has written some poetry and an autobiography; nothing  yet published. “He would be interested in observing everything around since he was little and used to be busy with making things that were beyond our understanding,” Jehangir’s father Abdul Rehman said. Newton’s statue carved out of wood by Jehangir and the portraits of scientists like Galileo, Stephen Hawking, and Einstein are an indication of his skills and innovative frame of mind. Prior to the Electrical Painting Brush he has attempted to devise Electricity Tester, Sewing Machine for physically challenged and a Dish Washer.
Jehangir has always got the psychological support from his family and friends but the financial constraints prevented him from making many of his ideas a reality.  “Emotional support is not always enough for making your dreams come true, you need money for doing what you are capable of doing,” Jehangir said.
But Jehangir like many other innovators has got due financial support by the Grassroots Innovation and Augmentation Network (GIAN) Cell- J&K, University of Kashmir and National Innovation Foundation. The gates for Jehangir’s success opened from here and he ended up getting one of the most prestigious awards in the field of innovation.
A student of B. Sc. Final Year, Jehangir has a deep desire to work with research organisations like Royal Society, NASA, BARC etc. “I am interested in fundamental research. I should do what nature has sent me for,” Jehangir said.
Jehangir is a strong advocate of incorporating specializations in the educational curriculum. This according to him will be helpful in exploring and promoting the innate capabilities of an individual. “We live in that part of the world where there is not much scope for innovations. Giving awards to the innovators is not sufficient, promoting the innovators and making their innovations a ground reality is a real reward for them,” believes a rather concerned Jehangir.
Jehangir and many other innovators like him are happy that their hard work has brought them some relief by fetching them national awards but what will help more is to take their innovations to the working class so that they could see their innovations being used by the people on ground. That will give them internal satisfaction and inspire other innovators to continue their enterprise; otherwise these innovators will be lost somewhere in the glare of this world.

Lastupdate on : Sat, 21 Apr 2012 21:30:00 Makkah time
Lastupdate on : Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:30:00 GMT
Lastupdate on : Sun, 22 Apr 2012 00:00:00 IST