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I saw Slumdog a couple weeks ago, and similar, I think , to everyone else who watched the movie, I was moved by it. What was clearly a feel-good story, somehow left me feeling not so good. The images of the child-trafficking rackets have stayed with me- and even though it is a reality that is relatively obvious in India, the director must be credited for portraying the issue with enough shock value to jerk me and most others out of their seats.
The following few weeks have made me question the fundamentals of "social causes"- which unfortunately must be lumped under this ambiguous category in our world today. This is because some problems in our world have passed a critical point, and now can only be solved by the intervention of responsible global citizens. However, if we must identify these issues as "social causes", are there some causes that command a higher moral imperative than others? That is, can we classify some as more "important" than others? The answer is probably a very subjective yes.
On a less abstract level, it made me wonder if I could be spending my time in India using my capacities towards other, more demanding causes. No, I did not come to India to simply work on social causes...I came here to explore the world of environmental and agricultural policy, and as luck would have it, I am doing just that. However, now that I am here, I can't help but question whether I could be using my capacities towards other goals, comparing the benefits of my work with Gomukh to the benefits that could be reaped if I worked with an NGO combating child trafficking. It is a thought that I have been wrestling with, and even though in all likelihood I will continue to wrestle with it till I leave here, the fact that it bothers me this much tells me that one day, I will definitely use my capacities to work on the child trafficking issue.
But work continues.
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In India, as in most places in the world, electricity is mostly produced through coal and other fossil fuel sources. With the boom of industry in India (and in China) however, it is no wonder that the increased demand for electricity has led it to huge increases in pollution. Additionally, the electricity infrastructure in India is weak, it is heavily reliant on huge power plants (hydroelectric and coal), it suffers from a very incomplete grid, concentrated areas of heavy usage, a highly varied demand, and massive , massive pilferage. For these reasons, over the last 20 years or so, the Government of India established a few ministries (as they often do) to start addressing the problem. These ministries pumped out many plans, many draft policies, all calling for a transition to renewable energy and less reliance on fossil fuels. Of course, these are important initial steps, but regardless, they were very rarely followed up on, especially because of the oil boom of the 80's .
Now that the world has latched on to 'green', and private industry is starting to profit on renewable energy, not to mention the electricity situation in India hasnt gotten much better, there is a true effort to subsidize renewable energy projects and encourage them.
While there are many plans for grid expansion, grid availability doesnt necessarily mean reliable electricity, and certainly doesnt protect from massive load shedding.
So, grid-independent projects have become very important (and more plausible, following the Indian govenrments liberalization of the energy market about 10 years ago).
This is where we come in. We have been working on providing renewable energy for a couple villages in rural Maharashtra, using biomass as our starting feedstock. Of course, at first, any project with the catchwords 'biomass' and 'renewable' sounds pretty green, but this is not necessarily so, and that is something that I've learnt during my time here. One of my jobs is to establish sustainability criteria for the project- that is, make a green-sounding project truly green. It's an interesting task, and its pulled a lot of my MoBio knowledge from college.
Working on the project has also opened my eyes to a lot of the other initiatives in rural electrification that are currently going on. For example, I had the opportunity to visit a tribal village called Wasota, deep in rural Maharashtra. Ironically, it is right next to the Koyna dam, one of the largest hydroelectric projects in India. However, it did not have any electricity, and was listed as one of the Remote Villages, which would have not have any grid access anywhere in the foreseeable future. So, with a little bit of NGO help, the village set up a biomass gasification system, where they produced electricity through the incomplete combustion of firewood.
Today, there is regular access to electricity for the 30+ households in the village, facilitating cooking, studying and many other day to day activities.
India is buzzing with ventures such as these- there is a huge demand for these projects, and with electricity now liberalized (particularly when selling energy back to the grid), the Indian entrepreneur is more than ready to bite the bait, as is the Indian NGO which seems to be thriving.
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However, there are some key issues with rural elecrification. For example- one as simple as, who will own the project once its set up? As I mentioned in a previous post, rural development is not just about bringing benefits to rural areas, but also integrating it into the community. This is Gomukh's main job in the renewable energy project. How do you transfer ownership and day to day management to the village?
Another issue is that of the food vs fuel debate. How do you create enough of an incentive for farmers to grow energy crops, but limit their incentive to enter into large scale monocropping of the energy crop, endangering food security?
And as for financials- how do you make the project economically viable, without making it a large scale project? Most often, to make most of these energy projects viable in the short term, the project requires massive scaling up- often making compromises in sustainability in the process. It isnt easy to fulfill our idea of making the project limited in its scale, only servicing the needs of particular villages. The billing for the project and the collection of payments also pose an interesting dilemma- we want to make the project as professional as possible, yet we want the beneficiaries to be comfortable and able to pay their bills.
While working on the project, we've come up with ideas for many of these issues, and I think that's whats made it all the more interesting and challenging. It also has made me absolutely restless to come back and see how the project has turned out in another 2 years. But until then, if you have any suggestions or ideas about some of the issues I talked about..share!
-Nikhil
Another issue is that of the food vs fuel debate. How do you create enough of an incentive for farmers to grow energy crops, but limit their incentive to enter into large scale monocropping of the energy crop, endangering food security?
And as for financials- how do you make the project economically viable, without making it a large scale project? Most often, to make most of these energy projects viable in the short term, the project requires massive scaling up- often making compromises in sustainability in the process. It isnt easy to fulfill our idea of making the project limited in its scale, only servicing the needs of particular villages. The billing for the project and the collection of payments also pose an interesting dilemma- we want to make the project as professional as possible, yet we want the beneficiaries to be comfortable and able to pay their bills.
While working on the project, we've come up with ideas for many of these issues, and I think that's whats made it all the more interesting and challenging. It also has made me absolutely restless to come back and see how the project has turned out in another 2 years. But until then, if you have any suggestions or ideas about some of the issues I talked about..share!
-Nikhil
