7th Experiment contd..

As discussed in last post, we (Winrock- the ngo with which i m working currently) have put of a decentralized power plant which provides electricity to the village and gets fuelled by seeds from Jatropha plant.

I will be sharing one of the most amazing experience which i got while discussing with the villagers here . In all the villages i have been, my focus has been to ascertain ownership feeling of the project by the village community. This project has been an altogether different experience.

While discussing with the villagers, i tried to elicit the sense of ownership and asked them "whose power plant is this" and to my surprise they said (in chattisgariya....one of our village representative helped me in understanding what he said) its ours-all villagers , i interrogated further and in order to confuse them i said how can it be yours..it should be of winrock or operators or government...one of them replied "साहब , इस प्लांट को लगवाने में हमने सहयोग दिया, जत्रोफा का पौधा हमारे श्रम दान से लगा, हम बीज इकठ्ठा करके देते हैं तब बिजली पैदा होती है और उस बिजली से हमारे घर में लाइट आती है, तब तोह ये हमारा ही हुआ न"
Needless say this is what is the ideal state any development intervention seeks to attain where the beneficiary's get the ownership sense of the project.

"Rekindling the dreams" continues.............................

7th Experiment -"Rekindling the dreams"

7th Experiment begins tomorrow.

When sun sets, the kingdom of darkness rises in close to one lakh villages of the country. Few years back, Ranidehra village in Kabirdham district of Chattisgarh used be one of the representatives of the unspoken and unlighted lives of people in such remote areas. Situation would have been the same today if people in the village and their Panchayat representatives had not shown willingness to join in one of the unique experiments in the field of rural electrification. With a firm faith on local villagers capability to initiate, organize and manage resources, Winrock the NGO I currently working with, envisioned a decentralized electrification power plant for the village to be fuelled using straight Jatropha oil which was never attempted before, either within, or outside the country . The objective of the pilot initiative was to demonstrate the technical and financial viability of running a small decentralized power plant using non-edible vegetable oil as fuel in place of conventional diesel to provide rural electricity.

This project within one year has to be transferred back to rural community for self management which is the ideal situation for any NGO before it removes itself from a project.

Addressing local issues in organizing people, raising capacity of the people to take ownership of the power plant, and most importantly, the linkage between access to energy and the improvement in the quality of life for the villagers have been attempted with utmost commitment . Ownership by local people is always easier said than done. This study which begins from tomorrow is to identify potential areas which can hinder the long term sustainability of the project and develop suitable mechanisms to tackle them. This becomes more important in the light of fact, that government has asked us to replicate this project in 5 villages in Jharkhand.

More-over focus will be on benefit mapping for the local populace thereby giving inputs for policy on rural electrification

Fully congnizant that we can't become sun to light lives but we can atleast become a small lamp.

Let's hope the lamp "Rekindles the dreams"

The telephone under the table

One telephonic conversation shaked my beliefs towards the cause of development. I had to put seriuous questions is it really possible the environment which is prevalent....well I won;t keep the suspense prolonged..........

We had sent a proposal for preparing master plan for solar city Moradabad. On the day of decision, I received a telephone call from Municipal Corporation of the city and person on the other side initially asked some technical questions related to the project and then indirectly asked for bribe for approving the proposal. For that moment I felt shocked, i thought may be i have heard it wrong ( in the last week's post, i had put high admiration for the municipal corporation officers of Dehradun) and asked him to repeat wat he said.....and just that;'s the end, he recieved nice scolding from me and the headset hanged and I knew our proposal was now rejected but I was very happy that atleast credibility of our NGO remained intact.

I don't know whatever best efforts one may put in for improving the lives of downtrodden, presence of such people in the systems will defeat all our endeavours. I am clueless. Someone will have to take a crusade against this "The telephone call under the table"............But Who .....The immediate saviour which our mind creates is we will need some authority to stop this, I hold a slightly different view.

I think answer lies within us. No Crusade (whether by PM or investigating agencies) will work unless it comes from common mass like us. We need to firmly resolve for day today small acts where if not all most of us fall prey to incognitively.

We need to commit to OURSELF that we won;t in anycase give bribe to

* TC in train for confirming the ticket, * Traffic personal for savings some 50-100 odd bugs *getting the LPG cylinder through black .........................I need not elaborate.

The Crusade must begin at the personal level............

Afterall its governor's oath ceremony.

Dehradun-Solar City Master Plan- This is the first full fledged assignment now about to complete in my first 4 month stint at Winrock.
Project as regards to its goals is very ambitious and aims at meeting 10% electricity demand through renewables and energy conservation measures. In almost all cities specially in northern India average power cut is around 2-3 hours which is bound to increase unless some measures are taken up and when this is the condition of cities, villages are even worse.

We were given a task to prepare a master plan which will incorporate energy planning and implementation mechanism. The whole process of preparing this plan revealed several dynamics which prevail across. Most important among these is the removal of bias against government servants. To my surprise i found few people in nagar nigam dehradun who are pushing things and intend to do a good job. Infact city engineer used to sit late till 7:30.
I was wondering if there are good change makers (even though few) why the process is slow. Possibly the last day of the visit, today, gave the answer. Municipal Commissioner and City Engineer had been trying for arranging a meeting with some other departments from where we can get more inputs for energy planning. Initially the date for the said meeting was 3rd, then got shifted to 4th and finally to 6th..thereby extending my stay here. About today they were pretty sure, but out of the blow came another hammer which struck everyone.
My Goodness "His Majesty, Governor had to take oath today", so all government officials had to make arrangements for the ceremony and therefore our meeting with those government officials never happened. I also couldn't;t afford to extend the trip beyond today due to my other assignments.
I dont intend to say that oath ceremony should not be there, infact Governor is the constitutional head of the state. My only contention is, in a country where have so many things in line to bring about improvement and where there are just few committed people to bring those changes, can we afford such pomp and show. Since I was privileged enough to have direct access to higher officials my problem was possibly minuscule, but i wonder there may be many people whose most urgent task's would have got stuck up and they cannot raise a voice also because "

Afterall its governor's oath ceremony.