Present day India is in the eye of a storm in every conceivable area of concern. There are different kinds of challenges faced on a daily basis by its citizens-- be it agriculture, education, technology, environment or medical facilities.

Given the unique cultural blend, history and size of the Indian populace, it would indeed come as no surprise if several of these problems are found to be in some way unique to India.

However, by and large, such systemic problems have often been addressed mainly from a "political" point of view. It is a daily feature to read about new forms of protest and strikes and cynical reader comments in newspapers about the infrastructure fallout. An unfortunate byproduct of such political solutions is that such solutions tend to create an environment of unnecessary conflict and tension.

Problems such as illiteracy, poverty, pollution, etc., are not caused by any one person or entity. There is no one blame to fix or one policy to change. The actual causes lie somewhere deeper and is more often easily overlooked. Political approaches to solving such problems only provide a symptomatic and temporary relief, while the actual problem, being now unattended, keeps growing silently until it resurfaces in a much bigger form.

The need for the day is insight. An insightful research into the cause of our problems, and a concerted, sustained effort towards solving it goes much beyond any kinds of protest or cynicism against the system. In short, we need ideas, ideas and more ideas that can explain a problem to us and provide solutions-- real solutions to them.

That, in short, is the motivation behind IfI. Have you ever had a brainwave which nobody listened to? Have you ever had ideas about innovative techniques that could enhance our life styles? Have you ever had insightful reflections in moments of solitude? If so, this is your chance to share it with others.

The IfI is a forum to exchange ideas on just about every issue confronting us. However, the restriction is that the ideas exchanged have to have a "technical", or rational, approach towards the problem. Ideas portraying extremist solutions ("Throw all the politicians out of the country"), those having too much of a political overture ("Bring XYZ party to power"), those portraying bigotry or hatred and those having elements of pure fantasy ("Population problem of India can be solved by establishing a colony on Mars") are out of the database. Ideas which are more pragmatic and substantiated by facts are preferred over those which are completely philosophical in nature.

Ideas posted in the database are first perused before they are posted onto the database. A facility for casting a "vote" for an idea is also provided. This helps in determining popular opinion about individual ideas. However, please note that the vote should not be considered representative of popular opinion as the voting system is not integral; we only can expect a correlation between votes and popular opinion.

In addition to ideas, users may also identify relevant problems and post them onto the database. Each problem posted would create further avenues for more ideas.

Lastly, this is a "free" database. Ideas that are posted to IfI are meant to be exchanged freely. The idea (if you will pardon the pun) is to remove competition and conflict at the level of idea conceivement-- which is more a scholarly affair-- so that actual competition could be relegated to the phases where ideas are actually implemented. This not only ensures free flow of scholarly insight, but also encourages competition (and hence options) in the implementation of ideas.