Governance Now, March 16-31,2011
Tale of an engineer who has built 16 mini-power plants to light up remote villages lying light years away from our consciousness
Remember the eureka moment for the old woman with a wrinkled face in the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer Swades when a bulb lights up on her face and she sees, for the first time in her life, the magic called ‘bijli’? That fairy-tale like incident actually happened in 2003 in Bilgaon, a remote village in Nandurbar district of Maharashtra. Forced to live in the dark age 56 years after independence, the villagers set up their own power plant and, yes, indeed, an NRI couple provided monetary support and two young engineers designed the blueprint of what came to be known as the Bilgaon Project to tap a 9-m high waterfall on river Udai, a tributary of the Narmada, to generate their own power. Medha Patkar’s Narmada Bachao Andolan was the moving force and every villager contributed ‘shramdaan’ (voluntary work) to make it happen. A year later, Swades took that story to the people, though this wasn’t the first project of its kind in the country.
The irony – or paradox – of the present-day development paradigm is that two years later, in 2006, the rising waters of the Sardar Sarovar dam washed away both the village and its power project forever.
But the good news is, many more such mini power plants are coming up in the country to light up the lives of those who have lost much, not benefitted, from the mega projects like the Sardar Sarovar sold to them in the name of development. During my recent visit to Kashipur, the back of beyond region of Orissa, I met one such public-spirited engineer who has made it his mission to spread the cheer and the couple who anchored him as well as the villagers.
V Ramasubramanian, a 42-year-old mechanical engineer from Tamil Nadu, started working with a non-governmental agency in Madurai while waiting for a “proper job”, like those in the railways or the corporate world, after completing his studies in 1987. But soon the job grew on him and in 1995 he went to Philippines to learn about how to set up Bilgaon-like micro-hydro projects. His training was organised by a UK-based charity organisation, called Intermediate Technology Development Group (now rechristened Practical Action).
A year later, he set up his first mini-power plant for a residential school in Ooty. It was a 300 watt plant that cost Rs 27,000. At that time, the turbine and the electric controller for the plant had to be imported from Nepal, which, he says, boasts of more than 10,000 mini power plants, against about 200 in India. Things have changed since then. The equipment are locally available and many states – Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Sikkim, West Bengal and even Ladakh in Jammu and Kashmir – boasts of several such plants now. Of course, these are all NGO-driven and privately funded. Mostly, they cost less than Rs 25 lakh.
Ram has so far built 16 mini plants, bringing joy to thousands of people across the country. And he is onto the 17th, in Peepalpadar of Kashipur. But I saw the one he had built in 2008, in Keshkeri, another inaccessible village in the same block. Though located just 40 km from block headquarters, it takes endless hours of painful driving and a daredevil at the wheels to reach the village of 37 Kondh families. No motorable road exists anywhere in Kashipur and we had left behind the last settlement to get electricity (Barpadamajhi village) 30 km away. When a 15 mw plant, commissioned by Agragamee, an NGO run by Achyut Das and his wife Vidhya Das, came up two years ago, the station master of the nearby Leliguma railway station was among the first to come running for a connection. But the villagers refused, saying that this was not a commercial venture and certainly not for a government agency. They had toiled hard for one and a half years to build it – first a check dam a
kilometre away, up in the hills, then a water channel close to their village, a 30 metre pipeline from there to the powerhouse about 100 metre from their village and then lay all the wires that had to be drawn to the last house. No government agency was in picture.
The life for Keshkeri villagers has changed dramatically. Though they still have to climb the hills to reach the block headquarters, every house in the village is now lit up at night in the glow of three CFL bulbs each. Kamlu Majhi, the ‘grama rakshi’ (village policeman), has even bought a television set and a DVD player to watch films. The whole village sits around whenever a DVD is brought in. They are also privileged to have streetlights, something of a rarity in Orissa which has only 22 percent households electrified so far. Better still, all electric cables are underground. Sunsets no longer means a time to sleep. Kids continue to create a racket as the elders occupy themselves in various ways long into the nights.
While looking to set up the plant, Ram and the Das couple were looking for three ingredients: a perennial water source, which can be dammed to release at least 250 litre of water every second and a height of at least 10 metres to generate enough force to run the turbine. They found that near Keshkeri and started working. Two German NGOs, Karl Kubel Stifung and Welthungerhilfe, helped Agragamee with Rs 22 lakh they needed to set up the plant, not counting the labour the villagers put in.
Now they have surplus power. As against 15 kw power the plant generates, street and house lighting takes up only three kw. Agragamee is putting up a rice mill, a leaf-plate making unit and an oil expeller for the villagers. But this would consume another three kw. Many, including those in the neighbouring villages, are eyeing their power but Agragamee and the villagers are not rushing into any decision. Having paid Rs 100 every month for a year to set up a “village fund” for emergencies and maintenance of the power plant, which was a condition laid by Agragamee, they can relax. They are now required to pay Rs 30 a month now, which is less than the cost of kerosene they were using earlier. Besides, the money goes to the village fund and the actual cost of maintenance may be a pittance.
Ram says nothing gives him more high than seeing the happy faces of the villagers when they see electricity for the first time. “It is a magical moment for them. Though they trust you when you tell them about generating power and work hard to make it a reality, they actually believe you when the bulbs lit up. They jump in joy, shout at the top of their voices and start singing merrily. That is my reward. When I saw this in Putsil for the first time (that was in 1997-98 in Orissa’s Koraput district), I decided to go on doing this,” he says.
As for the Das couple, theirs is a separate story. The power plant is one more milestone in their 30-year-long endeavour to make Kashipur a better place to live. n
prasanna@governancenow.com
No comments:
Post a Comment