For Pooja Pal, the idea for an invention did not begin in a laboratory. It began with a cloud of dust.
Growing up in Agehra village in Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, Pooja studied in circumstances far removed from the world of sophisticated science. Her family lived in a mud and thatch house, her father worked as a daily-wage labourer and her mother cooked meals at a government school. Electricity and basic facilities were limited, and Pooja often studied under a kerosene lamp.
Then, while she was in school, she noticed something that others had simply accepted as part of village life. A wheat-threshing machine near her school was sending thick clouds of dust into the air. Children were coughing, classes were being disturbed, and farmers were breathing the same dust during harvest.
Pooja couldn’t stop thinking about it. Could the dust be stopped? That question became her project.
With guidance from her science teacher Rajiv Srivastava and help from a welder, Pooja began experimenting with simple, locally available materials. Her solution, called the Bhusa-Dhool Prithakkaran Yantra, was designed as an attachment to a traditional thresher to separate chaff and trap airborne dust rather than allowing it to spread around.
There was nothing high-tech about the prototype. It used simple materials including tin, a fan and a collection mechanism and cost around ₹3,000 to build. For Pooja’s family, that was a significant amount of money. She also faced doubts from people around her who questioned what a schoolgirl could possibly achieve with such an idea.
But the little model kept moving. Her innovation progressed through the INSPIRE-MANAK system, from district and state stages to national recognition, and was later showcased at a national science exhibition.
Then came a journey that Pooja could probably never have imagined while studying under a kerosene lamp.
In June 2025, she travelled to Japan as part of the Sakura Science High School Programme, becoming the only student from Uttar Pradesh among 54 Indian students selected that year. There, she presented her innovation and experienced science and technology on an international platform.
And the recognition continued. In December 2025, Pooja received the Pradhan Mantri Rashtriya Bal Puraskar for her innovation, one of India’s highest national honours for children. She was among 20 children selected nationally for the award.
She has also been recognised by the Uttar Pradesh government as a Mission Shakti role model, while her journey has been featured in a documentary highlighting youth achievement.
But perhaps the most remarkable part of Pooja’s story is not that she built a machine for ₹3,000. It is that she saw a problem that everyone else had learned to live with, and decided that it didn’t have to remain that way.
Her invention began with dust in a village classroom. It carried her to a national award, then to Japan.
And along the way, it proved something much bigger: sometimes innovation begins not with what we have, but with what we refuse to accept.
