Rekindling the Dreams.. New Vistas

Seems like new vistas will open in our endeavor towards creation of self-reliant rural economy with rural energy access as entry point.


Last week was in Ranidhera, the village we have electrified using jatropha and village committee is managing it on their own since last 32 months. (Details: http://shardagautam.blogspot.com/2009/08/7th-experiment-rekindling-dreams.html )


Some experiments on field r in planning phase with respect to using byproducts of jatropha seed,  if successful will lead to increase in farm fertility of the village and would provide improved and cheaper cooking fuel. 


Mostly from Jan 2010 we will begin this experiment..Lets keep the fingers crossed !!!

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"