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"
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