Abstract
<jats:p>This monograph explores the phenomenon of grassroots innovation in India — a distinct and historically situated form of inventive and creative activity that emerges outside formal institutions of science, business, and state policy. Drawing on extensive documentary materials, fieldwork interviews, and institutional analysis, the study examines how grassroots innovations reshape the relationships between knowledge, technology, and development policy in contemporary India. Rather than viewing innovation as a purely technological or market-driven process, the book situates it within broader social, epistemic, and political transformations. The analysis reconstructs the intellectual and institutional genealogy of grassroots innovation in India, tracing its evolution from early experiments of the Honey Bee Network to the national innovation programs under the National Innovation Foundation and the Department of Science and Technology. Through this lens, the author reveals how grassroots innovation became not only an empirical field of policy experimentation but also a conceptual and epistemological project, one that challenges the universalist assumptions of mainstream Science, Technology and Innovation models. By highlighting processes of institutional embedding, legal adaptation, and epistemological translation, the monograph identifies both the potential and the limits of integrating local knowledge into national and global innovation systems. A key argument of the book is that India’s experience represents neither a simple “alternative” model nor a case of developmental exceptionalism, but rather an instance of epistemological and institutional reconfiguration. The Indian model demonstrates how knowledge, when recognized in its contextual and social embeddedness, can generate new forms of innovation governance and transform the very criteria of what counts as innovation. The study shows how mechanisms of grassroots innovation support have operationalized inclusive forms of evaluation, mediation, and distributed participation, making grassroots innovation a constitutive rather than marginal part of India’s STI policy. In theoretical terms, the monograph develops a framework for understanding grassroots innovation as an infrastructural mode of experimentation. It brings together perspectives from innovation studies, science and technology studies, and postcolonial theory to show that grassroots innovation is not a peripheral phenomenon but a methodological lens through which innovation systems themselves can be re-examined. The study argues for recognizing cognitive justice, situated knowledge, and plural epistemologies as key principles of an inclusive innovation policy capable of addressing the social, ecological, and ethical challenges of the twenty-first century. The book concludes by positioning the Indian experience as an epistemic and political resource for rethinking global STI governance. In a world where innovation discourses are increasingly shaped by technocratic and universalist paradigms, the Indian case demonstrates the possibility of building innovation architectures grounded in social participation, epistemological reflexivity, and institutional diversity. By linking empirical research with conceptual innovation, this study contributes to the emerging international debates on decolonizing innovation, reconfiguring knowledge infrastructures, and designing plural and equitable futures of technological development.</jats:p>