In this article, Dr. Rajvanshi makes out a case for sustainable energy development programme as a means to creating all-round rural development.
India's economy is growing presently at the rate of 10 per cent per annum. This means that we will double up all the inputs in seven years. Thus, by 2011, we will double the consumption of petroleum products, electricity, food and other commodities to keep this growth rate. Last year we imported about Rs 85,000 crore worth of petroleum products. India will also require about 140,000 mw of installed electricity capacity by 2010 at an estimated outlay of Rs 5.5 trillion. Thus, financial outlay needed for the energy sector alone is staggering and to maintain "India shining" it is necessary that we produce as much as possible, energy and liquid fuels internally.
There are about 60 per cent of rural households, which do not have electricity, and without the basic amenities in rural India the progress of the country will be hampered. A sustainable energy development programme can create all-round development. One of the possible ways to do it is the increased use of land based renewable energy resource like biomass. This will help rural development and create tremendous wealth in these areas. With rural India shining, India will automatically shine!
Land-based renewables
There are three ways in which energy production from land-based renewables can be effected:
* Production of electricity from biomass and agricultural residues.
* Liquid fuel production from biomass which can be grown in arid regions and on wastelands and saline soils. Besides producing liquid fuels, this will also help in land reclamation.
* Creation of synergy between corporate sector, national government labs and institutions and NGOs so that energy technologies can be developed and disseminated in rural areas.
A study done by the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Maharashtra showed that existing agricultural residues can produce all the electricity demands for a taluka. The study done for Phaltan taluka in western Maharashtra showed that these residues could produce about 10-15 mw of power from biomass based power plants. Besides, it was also shown that with a capital input of Rs 300 crore in power production technologies, each taluka could produce wealth of Rs 200-250 crore per year besides giving employment to 30,000 people year round. With about 3,340 talukas in India, there is a possibility of creating about Rs 7,00,000 crore per year of wealth and employment for about 100 million people per year.
The implications of this strategy for rural development are staggering and can create a quantum jump in the quality of life for rural population. With availability of assured electricity supply the growth in rural industrialisation can be exponential. With the new Electricity Act 2003 and Prime Minister's Rural Electricity Supply Technology (REST) Mission this strategy can become a reality and it is quite possible that in the coming years the whole face of rural India can change. Availability of assured electricity for lighting will make rural India shine!
India is following the world trend of increasing reliance on liquid fuels. Last year 75 per cent of all liquid fuels consumed was imported. By 2010, this figure might jump to 85-90 per cent. Increasing reliance on imported fuel will compromise our security and thus there is a need to develop an indigenous liquid fuel production policy based on renewables. The liquid fuel policy should, therefore, be centered on the production of ethanol and biodiesels. Presently, ethanol production in the country is mostly molasses based. However, with expanded use of ethanol, both for transportation and as cooking and lighting fuel, there is a need for its production to have a broader biomass base. Thus, the use of alternative feedstock like sweet sorghum, sugarbeet, cassava etc., can help in its increased production. Besides, these crops require less water than sugarcane and some of them can be grown on saline soils.
Thus, a national technology mission on alternative crops for alcohol production should be set up by the Government of India. It is estimated that ethanol production itself can bring in about Rs 40,000-50,000 crore wealth to rural India.
Technology mission
Similarly, the technology mission for new crops for producing biodiesel also needs to be set up. Some of the crops like Jatropha and tree borne non-edible oilseeds like Neem and Karanja can be grown on waste and degraded lands. This will also help the country in land reclamation. With very little processing required for biodiesel, the farmers can get substantial remunerations by growing them.
However, for the technology missions to succeed, it is necessary that very intensive R&D is carried out in agriculture, materials and renewable energy technologies. The Government of India should substantially increase the level of R&D funding in renewable energy and agricultural crops for liquid fuel production. Research done at NARI has shown that the emerging areas of nanotechnology and biotechnology can play a vital role in creating novel renewable energy technologies. Thus, new materials for storing biogas in small cylinders, increasing the efficiency of photovoltaic solar cells and producing new thermoelectric materials, which can efficiently convert heat directly into electricity, are being researched and developed via nanotechnology all over the world. Similarly, biotechnology can be used for increasing the efficiency of crops for liquid fuel and biomass production. It can also help develop organisms, which can increase the efficiency of ethanol fermentation and biogas production from their respective biomass.
For the fruits of extensive R&D to reach the rural areas, it is necessary that a strong synergy is developed between the corporate sector, the Central government R&D establishments and non-governmental organisations. Both the corporate sector and national labs can work together to research, produce and commercialise renewable energy technologies, which can be disseminated through NGOs in rural areas. Finally, the development of rural India should be taluka based for it provides the critical mass for rural development.
With rural India shining, India will shine!
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
River basin studies: A half-hearted attempt
By M H Ahssan
Impact assessment studies to understand the consequences of large dam projects have been de-linked from the actual implementation of the projects, thus diluting their value.
The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects of the Ministry of Environment and Forests of the Government of India has recently approved the Terms of Reference for conducting basin level studies of the Bichom and Lohit river basins in Arunachal Pradesh. The EAC has been constituted under the EIA notification 2006 to examine projects that apply to the Ministry for environmental clearance.
According to the TOR, the basin studies envisage "providing optimum support for various natural processes and allowing sustainable activities undertaken by its inhabitants". The Bichom and Lohit basins are among the river basins in the Himalayas where massive plans for building large dams and developing hydropower are being rolled out. More than a hundred projects with installed capacities totalling to 54,000 MW are at various stages of planning and implementation just in the state of Arunachal itself.
Often, a large number of dams are planned on single rivers or in single basins. For example, in the Lohit basin, a cascade of six projects totalling to 7918 MW are being planned, all within a length of 86 kms.
Such cascade-type development or a number of dams in a single basin raise the critically important issue of cumulative impacts. Often, the impact of all projects taken together is much greater than the sum of impacts of individual projects. Unfortunately, cumulative impacts are hardly ever assessed, as individual projects are planned and evaluated separately. One of the strongest criticisms against the recent plans of dam building has been the complete lack of any assessment of the carrying capacity - what level of development, and in particular the number of dams a basin can sustain - and of the totality of impacts of the number of dams and projects in the basin.
Indeed, when the impact assessment of even individual projects is patchy at best and often farcical, it would be too much to expect a proper cumulative impact assessment.
Against this background, the decision to undertake basin level studies in the Lohit and Bichom are welcome steps in the right direction. The TORs of the basin studies indicate that wide-ranging and extensive examination has been called for, as is necessary for any such study. The TORs call for "inventorisation and analysis of the existing resource base and its production, consumption and conservation levels, determination of regional ecological fragility/sensitivity based on geo-physical, biological, socio-economic and cultural attributes, review of existing and planned developments as per various developmental plans, and evaluation of impacts on various facets of environment due to existing and planned development."
The studies are to then assess the stress/load due to various activities and suggest environmental action plans that can involve preclusion or modification any activity and measures. Unfortunately, the good part ends with this. The way the studies have been structured ends up defeating the very purpose of carrying them out.
First and foremost, the basin studies have been effectively de-linked from the implementation of the projects as there is no requirement that the projects be conditional to the findings of the basin studies. Neither is there any explicit stay on the consideration and implementation of any of the projects pending the studies.
Logically, the basin studies should suggest what level of development, including hydropower projects, the basin can sustain. The projects should be planned based on this. However, the current planning and decision making turns this on its head. The numbers, locations, capacities, types and other details of the projects have already been decided. Many of these projects have already been allotted to (mostly) private developers who already have or would soon be approaching the Ministry for environmental clearance. In Bichom basin, the 600 MW Bichom (or Kameng) project is already under construction.
It is clear that the Expert Appraisal Committee understood this issue. The Minutes of its meeting dated 15 and 16 December 2008 record that "The committee noted that the study will be completed in two years and M/s WAPCOS has been entrusted with the job. In case, any project on this basin is submitted during this study period for environmental clearance, how the outcome of the study will help to take a decision could not be clarified." The obvious solution is to put on hold the projects till the studies are done. However, what the Committee decided is that "the report may be submitted within six months by reducing the TOR and the study should focus only on hydroelectric projects."
Thus, studies that would need about two years are to be done in six months (later this was extended to nine) with reduced TORs. How the outcome of such truncated studies would help rational environmental decision making is a question. It is clear that the environmental objectives have been sidelined with an eye to build as many dams as possible.
The TOR for the studies does state that they can recommend the "preclusion of any activity", which presumably means that they can call for any or some of the hydropower plants not to be built. In reality, such an outcome is highly unlikely, as is seen from the reluctance to explicitly put on hold the projects in the basin pending the results of the study. While the Committee has from time to time discussed with concern the possible impacts of large number of projects in a single basin, it has fallen shy of taking the right, but hard decision when actually dealing with the problem.
For example, the Lohit basin study was originally envisaged and put forward as a condition while granting clearance for pre-construction activities to the Upper and Lower Demwe projects in March 2008. But the Minutes of the EAC meeting of July 2008, while discussing the basin study note that "Environmental Clearance to Demwe Upper and Demwe Lower HE Project should not be linked up with the completion of basin study." These two projects add up to 3430 MW, a full 43 per cent of the total 7918 MW planned in the basin.
Further, considering that the studies are to be paid for by the project developers - in proportion to the size of the projects they have been allotted - the conflict of interest is clear.
An earlier such basin study - to determined the carrying capacity of the Teesta basin in Sikkim, initiated in 2001 - at least had a condition that no project will be considered for environmental clearance till the carrying study is completed. That study took over five years. However, the MoEF violated its own condition and accorded clearance to several projects even before the study was completed. On the other hand, based on the recommendations of the study, the MoEF has asked the Sikkim Government to drop five hydropower projects above Chungthang, and restrict the height of those below it. This shows that findings of such studies are likely to require significant rethinking of dam building plans in the river basins.
Neeraj Vagholikar, who is with the environmental organisation Kalpavriksh and has studied dam projects in the North-East since 2001 says about the Bichom and Lohit studies: "The reluctance to put on hold individual project clearances till comprehensive river basin studies are completed puts a question mark on the utility of the entire exercise. Moreover, the river basin studies will now be much shorter exercises instead of the comprehensive ones envisaged earlier, which are necessary for proper environmental decision-making. It appears that the Bichom and Lohit studies are more likely to be used to create a justification for the large scale hydropower development already planned than protect the ecological integrity of these river basins. One of the two key outcomes proposed for the studies - to provide sustainable and optimal ways of hydropower development - is a clear indication that the environmental objectives are of secondary importance."
The silver lining to this is that the second key outcome specified by the TOR is to "assess requirement of environmental flow during lean season with actual flow, depth and velocity at different level". It is significant that the Committee has recognised the importance of environmental flows, the flows necessary to maintain the ecological existence of the river, an issue that is increasingly being acknowledged as critical to sound river basin planning. One has to wait and see if the studies would have the independence to recommend preclusion or modifications to some of the hydropower projects if this is found necessary to maintain environmental flows, and if so, whether such recommendations could be implemented.
While there are several other important issues with the basin studies not discussed here, there is one that is essential to point out. The TORs for the basin studies lay out in detail many parameters that need to be studied, field data that needs to be collected, but fail to require that the local communities be consulted and involved in the process. This is a major shortcoming, and an indicator that the studies are reinforcing the technocratic approach instead of a participatory one that is the essence of environmental decision-making.
The basin studies for Bichom and Lohit are examples of a good initiative gone awry. The Committee's recognition of the need for basin studies is a welcome step. It is clear that this is an acknowledgement of issues of cumulative impacts and carrying capacity that activists, researchers, academics, dam affected people and others have been consistently raising for the last many years. At the same time, it does not go to the logical conclusion and hence has become self-defeating.
What the Committee needs to do is to re-define the TORs for the studies allowing them the two years that the committee itself feels are necessary, and redesigning them to require meaningful participation of local communities and civil society. Meanwhile it should put the projects in the basin on hold, and make them conditional to the findings of the study. If this is done, it will be a significant step in the direction of environmentally sustainable and holistic approach to development.
Impact assessment studies to understand the consequences of large dam projects have been de-linked from the actual implementation of the projects, thus diluting their value.The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) on River Valley and Hydroelectric Projects of the Ministry of Environment and Forests of the Government of India has recently approved the Terms of Reference for conducting basin level studies of the Bichom and Lohit river basins in Arunachal Pradesh. The EAC has been constituted under the EIA notification 2006 to examine projects that apply to the Ministry for environmental clearance.
According to the TOR, the basin studies envisage "providing optimum support for various natural processes and allowing sustainable activities undertaken by its inhabitants". The Bichom and Lohit basins are among the river basins in the Himalayas where massive plans for building large dams and developing hydropower are being rolled out. More than a hundred projects with installed capacities totalling to 54,000 MW are at various stages of planning and implementation just in the state of Arunachal itself.
Often, a large number of dams are planned on single rivers or in single basins. For example, in the Lohit basin, a cascade of six projects totalling to 7918 MW are being planned, all within a length of 86 kms.
Such cascade-type development or a number of dams in a single basin raise the critically important issue of cumulative impacts. Often, the impact of all projects taken together is much greater than the sum of impacts of individual projects. Unfortunately, cumulative impacts are hardly ever assessed, as individual projects are planned and evaluated separately. One of the strongest criticisms against the recent plans of dam building has been the complete lack of any assessment of the carrying capacity - what level of development, and in particular the number of dams a basin can sustain - and of the totality of impacts of the number of dams and projects in the basin.
Indeed, when the impact assessment of even individual projects is patchy at best and often farcical, it would be too much to expect a proper cumulative impact assessment.
Against this background, the decision to undertake basin level studies in the Lohit and Bichom are welcome steps in the right direction. The TORs of the basin studies indicate that wide-ranging and extensive examination has been called for, as is necessary for any such study. The TORs call for "inventorisation and analysis of the existing resource base and its production, consumption and conservation levels, determination of regional ecological fragility/sensitivity based on geo-physical, biological, socio-economic and cultural attributes, review of existing and planned developments as per various developmental plans, and evaluation of impacts on various facets of environment due to existing and planned development."
The studies are to then assess the stress/load due to various activities and suggest environmental action plans that can involve preclusion or modification any activity and measures. Unfortunately, the good part ends with this. The way the studies have been structured ends up defeating the very purpose of carrying them out.
First and foremost, the basin studies have been effectively de-linked from the implementation of the projects as there is no requirement that the projects be conditional to the findings of the basin studies. Neither is there any explicit stay on the consideration and implementation of any of the projects pending the studies.
Logically, the basin studies should suggest what level of development, including hydropower projects, the basin can sustain. The projects should be planned based on this. However, the current planning and decision making turns this on its head. The numbers, locations, capacities, types and other details of the projects have already been decided. Many of these projects have already been allotted to (mostly) private developers who already have or would soon be approaching the Ministry for environmental clearance. In Bichom basin, the 600 MW Bichom (or Kameng) project is already under construction.
It is clear that the Expert Appraisal Committee understood this issue. The Minutes of its meeting dated 15 and 16 December 2008 record that "The committee noted that the study will be completed in two years and M/s WAPCOS has been entrusted with the job. In case, any project on this basin is submitted during this study period for environmental clearance, how the outcome of the study will help to take a decision could not be clarified." The obvious solution is to put on hold the projects till the studies are done. However, what the Committee decided is that "the report may be submitted within six months by reducing the TOR and the study should focus only on hydroelectric projects."
Thus, studies that would need about two years are to be done in six months (later this was extended to nine) with reduced TORs. How the outcome of such truncated studies would help rational environmental decision making is a question. It is clear that the environmental objectives have been sidelined with an eye to build as many dams as possible.
The TOR for the studies does state that they can recommend the "preclusion of any activity", which presumably means that they can call for any or some of the hydropower plants not to be built. In reality, such an outcome is highly unlikely, as is seen from the reluctance to explicitly put on hold the projects in the basin pending the results of the study. While the Committee has from time to time discussed with concern the possible impacts of large number of projects in a single basin, it has fallen shy of taking the right, but hard decision when actually dealing with the problem.
For example, the Lohit basin study was originally envisaged and put forward as a condition while granting clearance for pre-construction activities to the Upper and Lower Demwe projects in March 2008. But the Minutes of the EAC meeting of July 2008, while discussing the basin study note that "Environmental Clearance to Demwe Upper and Demwe Lower HE Project should not be linked up with the completion of basin study." These two projects add up to 3430 MW, a full 43 per cent of the total 7918 MW planned in the basin.
Further, considering that the studies are to be paid for by the project developers - in proportion to the size of the projects they have been allotted - the conflict of interest is clear.
An earlier such basin study - to determined the carrying capacity of the Teesta basin in Sikkim, initiated in 2001 - at least had a condition that no project will be considered for environmental clearance till the carrying study is completed. That study took over five years. However, the MoEF violated its own condition and accorded clearance to several projects even before the study was completed. On the other hand, based on the recommendations of the study, the MoEF has asked the Sikkim Government to drop five hydropower projects above Chungthang, and restrict the height of those below it. This shows that findings of such studies are likely to require significant rethinking of dam building plans in the river basins.
Neeraj Vagholikar, who is with the environmental organisation Kalpavriksh and has studied dam projects in the North-East since 2001 says about the Bichom and Lohit studies: "The reluctance to put on hold individual project clearances till comprehensive river basin studies are completed puts a question mark on the utility of the entire exercise. Moreover, the river basin studies will now be much shorter exercises instead of the comprehensive ones envisaged earlier, which are necessary for proper environmental decision-making. It appears that the Bichom and Lohit studies are more likely to be used to create a justification for the large scale hydropower development already planned than protect the ecological integrity of these river basins. One of the two key outcomes proposed for the studies - to provide sustainable and optimal ways of hydropower development - is a clear indication that the environmental objectives are of secondary importance."
The silver lining to this is that the second key outcome specified by the TOR is to "assess requirement of environmental flow during lean season with actual flow, depth and velocity at different level". It is significant that the Committee has recognised the importance of environmental flows, the flows necessary to maintain the ecological existence of the river, an issue that is increasingly being acknowledged as critical to sound river basin planning. One has to wait and see if the studies would have the independence to recommend preclusion or modifications to some of the hydropower projects if this is found necessary to maintain environmental flows, and if so, whether such recommendations could be implemented.
While there are several other important issues with the basin studies not discussed here, there is one that is essential to point out. The TORs for the basin studies lay out in detail many parameters that need to be studied, field data that needs to be collected, but fail to require that the local communities be consulted and involved in the process. This is a major shortcoming, and an indicator that the studies are reinforcing the technocratic approach instead of a participatory one that is the essence of environmental decision-making.
The basin studies for Bichom and Lohit are examples of a good initiative gone awry. The Committee's recognition of the need for basin studies is a welcome step. It is clear that this is an acknowledgement of issues of cumulative impacts and carrying capacity that activists, researchers, academics, dam affected people and others have been consistently raising for the last many years. At the same time, it does not go to the logical conclusion and hence has become self-defeating.
What the Committee needs to do is to re-define the TORs for the studies allowing them the two years that the committee itself feels are necessary, and redesigning them to require meaningful participation of local communities and civil society. Meanwhile it should put the projects in the basin on hold, and make them conditional to the findings of the study. If this is done, it will be a significant step in the direction of environmentally sustainable and holistic approach to development.
Indian scientists bridge audio divide
By Raja Murthy
An Indian American duo at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created new technology based on the greatest engineering feat of nature - the human mind-body structure. Their invention, the Radio Frequency Cochlea, will not only enable a new generation of wireless Internet and communication technologies, but will also serve as a reminder of just how much civilization owes to the inner ear and ancient Asian powers of memory.
Indian American scientists Rahul Sarpeshkar and Soumyajit Mandal have merged human evolution with 21st century technology in their new invention - a high-speed, ultra-broadband, low-power radio chip that works on the same principles as the human inner ear, or cochlea.
Their invention, which they filed for patent as the Radio Frequency Cochlea (RF Cochlea), will usher in the next generation of wireless Internet, cell phone, radio and TV devices, and inevitably impact a US$2 trillion global media and entertainment industry with more advanced sound gizmos.
More immediately, the RF Cochlea will vastly improve radio frequency spectrum in the newly dawning technology of cognitive and smart radios - vital devices that automatically make better use of unused frequencies in our increasingly bandwidth-crowded world.
Sarpeshkar, a well-known professor of electrical engineering at the MIT and his graduate student Mondal, designed the 1mm by 3 mm RF Cochlea chip that is faster and more energy efficient than any currently working in radio-frequency (RF) spectrum analyzers [1].
More significantly, the RF Cochlea opens a fascinating new frontier of technology: living aid devices popping out of science blending with millions of years of human evolution. We could be entering an era of humanology, or more holistic technology uniting two or more disciplines of humanity-related knowledge.
Sarpeshkar told Asia Times Online that his invention has been "enthusiastically" received. "For the first time, we have technology that bridges the working of the human ear with the working of radio," he said.
That professionals involved with hearing having earlier had no working connection with those involved in radio technology sounds incredible. But it demonstrates how obviously related disciplines have been developing on parallel but separate tracks, until Sarpeshkar and his MIT team appeared. More disciplines could similarly and beneficially converge.
Sarpeshkar acknowledged that engineers could learn much from the greatest engineering device known yet to humans: the human mind-body structure.
While Mother Nature's technology is still leagues ahead of the variety created by humans, Sarpeshkar was inspired by nature's design concepts that have evolved over eons.
"Humans have a long way to go before their architectures will successfully compete with those in nature, especially in situations where ultra-energy-efficient or ultra-low-power operations are paramount," he said in a MIT media release dated June 3. "Nevertheless, we can mine the intellectual resources of nature to create devices useful to humans, just as we have mined her physical resources in the past."
Sarpeshkar and Mondal used the same design principles in the human ear to create the RF Cochlea. The device captures radio frequencies a million times higher than the 100 Hz (100 wave cycles per second) to 100,000 Hz that the human ear captures. It includes radio signals for most commercial wireless applications.
In Sarpeshkar's RF Cochlea, human-made inductors imitate the work of fluid mass in the ear, capacitors replicate ear membranes and active radio frequency amplifiers do the work of the outer hair cells in the ear that carry audio as electrical signals to the brain.
"The outer human ear acts as the radio antenna," Sarpeshkar explained to Asia Times Online, "the middle ear sifts through the substance from unwanted noise and the inner ear, or cochlea, is the amplifier and separates frequencies before sending signals to the brain."
As Sarpeshkar pointed out, RF Cochlea represents not merely a more holistic blending of human technology with nature's engineering, of merging biology with advanced electronics, but it also gives insights about the sense of hearing, a faculty fundamental to the development of civilizations.
That the inner ear and the evolving human mind are inter-dependent is obvious with the ancient world's richest treasures of wisdom first preserved and passed on across millennia through the inner cochlea hearing the spoken word, not eyes reading written script, and storing those words accurately in powerful memory.
The sensory impact the inner ear has on the mind becomes evident in how great oratory mesmerizes more than a great essay, or the way great music captivates and changes moods more than great prose. In his famous dialogues of Phaedrus (360 BC), ancient Greek teacher Plato too argues of the superiority of the spoken over the written word.
Sarpeshkar's South Asian origin fits with the ancient regional tradition of the heard and memorized word, via the inner cochlea, protecting old world knowledge and wisdom from invading culture destroyers burning libraries, books and manuscripts. The connection between the inner ear and memory can make fascinating scientific study.
"While the textual riches of Alexandria, China and Rome were being put to the flame, a wholly different tradition of scientific expression was brought to a peak in India, in a manner that would prove enormously more resilient to the vicissitudes of time and adversity," observed Alok Kumar, Department of Physics, State University of New York. "This was the oral, poetic tradition of Indian thought, whose greatest purveyor in astronomy and mathematics was Aryabhata."
Mathematician astronomer Aryabhata (born 476 AD), after whom India named its first satellite launched in April 19, 1975, composed the Aryabhatiya, a remarkable astronomy and mathematical work in poetic form. "There are no numbers anywhere in Aryabhata's composition in Sanskrit language, nor are there figures, drawings, or equations," wrote Kumar in his project note for the New Jersey, Princeton-based Educational Council on Indic Traditions organization that commissioned him to study ancient Indian contributions to science. "The Aryabhatiya expresses the highly sophisticated mathematics of sine functions, volumetric determinations, calculation of celestial latitudes and motions, and much more, in the form of a poetic code."
Inputs through the inner cochlea and advanced powers of memory preserved a more priceless treasure, the Buddha's teaching of Dhamma, or universal laws of nature, that detailed a non-sectarian path for freedom from all suffering - by objectively observing the constantly changing mind-matter phenomena within, manifesting at the bio-chemical level as bodily sensations arising and passing away, instead of blindly reacting to whatever we experience in the outside world.
The entire 82,000 discourses of the Buddha and related commentaries in Pali, one of the oldest known languages, were memorized and their authenticity confirmed in historic congregations of monks such as the Chatta Sanghayana or Sixth Council held in Yangon, Burma, between 1954 and 1956.
The First Council was convened in 544 BC, in the Sattapaaai Cave located outside Rajagaha, northern India, three months after the Buddha passed away. It was only during the Fourth Council held in Tambapanni, Sri Lanka, in 29 BC under King Vattagamani's patronage, that the voluminous Tipitaka [2] texts containing the Buddha’s teachings and related commentaries were committed to written script on palm leaves.
In the Chatta Sanghayana or Sixth Council in Burma, 2,500 learned monks from Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam recited the entire 82,000 discourses and related commentaries that they had heard and committed to memory, as did generations of monks across two millennia.
"An European spectator would have marveled at this preternatural feat, but it [extraordinary powers of memory of the heard word] is a commonplace occurrence in this area of the world," wrote a leading Sri Lankan scholar Harischandra Kaviratna in his 1971 essay "Unbroken Chain of Oral Tradition".
Sarpeshkar's RF Cochlea marks the latest milestone in the evolutionary journey of human hearing and civilization, a path that transcends a distance from 544 BC when the Buddha's personal attendant Ananda narrated to the First Council the entire discourses he heard from the Buddha, word for word. Ananda started every repeated discourse with the words in Pali "evam me suttam", meaning "Thus, have I heard [from the Enlightened One]".
"As in all interdisciplinary fields, it is important to synergistically combine the creativity and excitement generated by new non-traditional thinking with the discipline and knowledge of older ideas," said Sarpeshkar who calls the biological inner ear an "amazing custom analog computer".
"The cochlea quickly gets the big picture of what's going on in the sound spectrum," said Sarpeshkar. "The more I started to look at the ear, the more I realized it's like a super-radio with 3,500 parallel channels."
Forty-year-old Sarpeshkar was born and brought up in Bangalore before he left for the US as an under-graduate student. He holds over 20 patents, has authored more than 70 publications and ranks among the world's most brilliant young scientists from South Asia. His several awards include the Packard Fellow award, given to outstanding young faculty, and the Indus Technovator Award, which MIT instituted in 2003, for distinguished young innovators of South Asian origin working at the confluence of technology research and entrepreneurship.
After obtaining his degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT and his PhD at Caltech, Sarpeshkar joined the technical staff at Bell Labs, Biological Computation department within its physics division. Since 1999, he has served in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty, leading a research group on analog VLSI and biological systems that works on developing what it calls "low-power brain-machine interfaces".
The cosmopolitan Analog VLSI MIT team reflects the kind of international talent that MIT hopes to nurture in country specific programs it has operated since 1994 in China, Japan, Israel, India, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain.
Sarpeshkar's MIT team, for instance, includes Scott Arfin, Benjamin Rapoport, Lorenzo Turicchia, Micah O'Halloran from the US; Serhii M. Zhak from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia; Soumyajit Mandal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Keng-Hoong Wee from Tohoku University, Japan; and Woradorn Wattanapanitch from Thailand.
So far, their brain-machine interfaces work to combine the human physical structure and 21st century technology has produced:
A new generation of high performance, low-power devices that mimic the communicating relationship of the mind, brain and human limbs, to help paralysis patients, the blind, and victims of Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. These ultra-low power brain-machine devices can run for 10 years or more, compared to current bulky devices that are 100-10,000 times more power and often lack wireless capabilities.
The Bionic Ear project to design advanced ultra-low-power cochlear-implant systems that also enable the deaf to hear music and tonal languages such as Chinese and other East Asian languages. Tonal languages use variations in tone, or pitch, to express different meanings of words. For example, the Mandarin word "ba" can be used with four different intonations to mean "eight", "to uproot", "to hold" and "a harrow". In contrast, English is a stress or accent-oriented language.
"Biological systems have developed over hundreds of millions of years of evolution to perform sensory, motor and chemical tasks extremely efficiently and robustly while using very little power, in very little volumes, and in real time," said Sarpeshkar, who sees his research as just the beginning of a journey for many more efficient, adaptable and cost-effective technologies to be developed from biology.
The RF Cochlea device demonstrates what can happen when researchers take inspiration from fields outside their own, said Sarpeshkar. "Healthcare is a natural area for applying biologically inspired technologies since we are trying to engineer systems that perform the normal functions of biological ones, so mimicking the biology can be helpful in fixing it."
Sarpeshkar's work also reflects the rewards that come by way of those daring to walk the rarely trodden path. "I have followed my heart in my work, and in my love for science," he said.
An Indian American duo at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has created new technology based on the greatest engineering feat of nature - the human mind-body structure. Their invention, the Radio Frequency Cochlea, will not only enable a new generation of wireless Internet and communication technologies, but will also serve as a reminder of just how much civilization owes to the inner ear and ancient Asian powers of memory.
Indian American scientists Rahul Sarpeshkar and Soumyajit Mandal have merged human evolution with 21st century technology in their new invention - a high-speed, ultra-broadband, low-power radio chip that works on the same principles as the human inner ear, or cochlea.
Their invention, which they filed for patent as the Radio Frequency Cochlea (RF Cochlea), will usher in the next generation of wireless Internet, cell phone, radio and TV devices, and inevitably impact a US$2 trillion global media and entertainment industry with more advanced sound gizmos.
More immediately, the RF Cochlea will vastly improve radio frequency spectrum in the newly dawning technology of cognitive and smart radios - vital devices that automatically make better use of unused frequencies in our increasingly bandwidth-crowded world.
Sarpeshkar, a well-known professor of electrical engineering at the MIT and his graduate student Mondal, designed the 1mm by 3 mm RF Cochlea chip that is faster and more energy efficient than any currently working in radio-frequency (RF) spectrum analyzers [1].
More significantly, the RF Cochlea opens a fascinating new frontier of technology: living aid devices popping out of science blending with millions of years of human evolution. We could be entering an era of humanology, or more holistic technology uniting two or more disciplines of humanity-related knowledge.
Sarpeshkar told Asia Times Online that his invention has been "enthusiastically" received. "For the first time, we have technology that bridges the working of the human ear with the working of radio," he said.
That professionals involved with hearing having earlier had no working connection with those involved in radio technology sounds incredible. But it demonstrates how obviously related disciplines have been developing on parallel but separate tracks, until Sarpeshkar and his MIT team appeared. More disciplines could similarly and beneficially converge.
Sarpeshkar acknowledged that engineers could learn much from the greatest engineering device known yet to humans: the human mind-body structure.
While Mother Nature's technology is still leagues ahead of the variety created by humans, Sarpeshkar was inspired by nature's design concepts that have evolved over eons.
"Humans have a long way to go before their architectures will successfully compete with those in nature, especially in situations where ultra-energy-efficient or ultra-low-power operations are paramount," he said in a MIT media release dated June 3. "Nevertheless, we can mine the intellectual resources of nature to create devices useful to humans, just as we have mined her physical resources in the past."
Sarpeshkar and Mondal used the same design principles in the human ear to create the RF Cochlea. The device captures radio frequencies a million times higher than the 100 Hz (100 wave cycles per second) to 100,000 Hz that the human ear captures. It includes radio signals for most commercial wireless applications.
In Sarpeshkar's RF Cochlea, human-made inductors imitate the work of fluid mass in the ear, capacitors replicate ear membranes and active radio frequency amplifiers do the work of the outer hair cells in the ear that carry audio as electrical signals to the brain.
"The outer human ear acts as the radio antenna," Sarpeshkar explained to Asia Times Online, "the middle ear sifts through the substance from unwanted noise and the inner ear, or cochlea, is the amplifier and separates frequencies before sending signals to the brain."
As Sarpeshkar pointed out, RF Cochlea represents not merely a more holistic blending of human technology with nature's engineering, of merging biology with advanced electronics, but it also gives insights about the sense of hearing, a faculty fundamental to the development of civilizations.
That the inner ear and the evolving human mind are inter-dependent is obvious with the ancient world's richest treasures of wisdom first preserved and passed on across millennia through the inner cochlea hearing the spoken word, not eyes reading written script, and storing those words accurately in powerful memory.
The sensory impact the inner ear has on the mind becomes evident in how great oratory mesmerizes more than a great essay, or the way great music captivates and changes moods more than great prose. In his famous dialogues of Phaedrus (360 BC), ancient Greek teacher Plato too argues of the superiority of the spoken over the written word.
Sarpeshkar's South Asian origin fits with the ancient regional tradition of the heard and memorized word, via the inner cochlea, protecting old world knowledge and wisdom from invading culture destroyers burning libraries, books and manuscripts. The connection between the inner ear and memory can make fascinating scientific study.
"While the textual riches of Alexandria, China and Rome were being put to the flame, a wholly different tradition of scientific expression was brought to a peak in India, in a manner that would prove enormously more resilient to the vicissitudes of time and adversity," observed Alok Kumar, Department of Physics, State University of New York. "This was the oral, poetic tradition of Indian thought, whose greatest purveyor in astronomy and mathematics was Aryabhata."
Mathematician astronomer Aryabhata (born 476 AD), after whom India named its first satellite launched in April 19, 1975, composed the Aryabhatiya, a remarkable astronomy and mathematical work in poetic form. "There are no numbers anywhere in Aryabhata's composition in Sanskrit language, nor are there figures, drawings, or equations," wrote Kumar in his project note for the New Jersey, Princeton-based Educational Council on Indic Traditions organization that commissioned him to study ancient Indian contributions to science. "The Aryabhatiya expresses the highly sophisticated mathematics of sine functions, volumetric determinations, calculation of celestial latitudes and motions, and much more, in the form of a poetic code."
Inputs through the inner cochlea and advanced powers of memory preserved a more priceless treasure, the Buddha's teaching of Dhamma, or universal laws of nature, that detailed a non-sectarian path for freedom from all suffering - by objectively observing the constantly changing mind-matter phenomena within, manifesting at the bio-chemical level as bodily sensations arising and passing away, instead of blindly reacting to whatever we experience in the outside world.
The entire 82,000 discourses of the Buddha and related commentaries in Pali, one of the oldest known languages, were memorized and their authenticity confirmed in historic congregations of monks such as the Chatta Sanghayana or Sixth Council held in Yangon, Burma, between 1954 and 1956.
The First Council was convened in 544 BC, in the Sattapaaai Cave located outside Rajagaha, northern India, three months after the Buddha passed away. It was only during the Fourth Council held in Tambapanni, Sri Lanka, in 29 BC under King Vattagamani's patronage, that the voluminous Tipitaka [2] texts containing the Buddha’s teachings and related commentaries were committed to written script on palm leaves.
In the Chatta Sanghayana or Sixth Council in Burma, 2,500 learned monks from Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Laos, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam recited the entire 82,000 discourses and related commentaries that they had heard and committed to memory, as did generations of monks across two millennia.
"An European spectator would have marveled at this preternatural feat, but it [extraordinary powers of memory of the heard word] is a commonplace occurrence in this area of the world," wrote a leading Sri Lankan scholar Harischandra Kaviratna in his 1971 essay "Unbroken Chain of Oral Tradition".
Sarpeshkar's RF Cochlea marks the latest milestone in the evolutionary journey of human hearing and civilization, a path that transcends a distance from 544 BC when the Buddha's personal attendant Ananda narrated to the First Council the entire discourses he heard from the Buddha, word for word. Ananda started every repeated discourse with the words in Pali "evam me suttam", meaning "Thus, have I heard [from the Enlightened One]".
"As in all interdisciplinary fields, it is important to synergistically combine the creativity and excitement generated by new non-traditional thinking with the discipline and knowledge of older ideas," said Sarpeshkar who calls the biological inner ear an "amazing custom analog computer".
"The cochlea quickly gets the big picture of what's going on in the sound spectrum," said Sarpeshkar. "The more I started to look at the ear, the more I realized it's like a super-radio with 3,500 parallel channels."
Forty-year-old Sarpeshkar was born and brought up in Bangalore before he left for the US as an under-graduate student. He holds over 20 patents, has authored more than 70 publications and ranks among the world's most brilliant young scientists from South Asia. His several awards include the Packard Fellow award, given to outstanding young faculty, and the Indus Technovator Award, which MIT instituted in 2003, for distinguished young innovators of South Asian origin working at the confluence of technology research and entrepreneurship.
After obtaining his degree in Electrical Engineering and Physics at MIT and his PhD at Caltech, Sarpeshkar joined the technical staff at Bell Labs, Biological Computation department within its physics division. Since 1999, he has served in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty, leading a research group on analog VLSI and biological systems that works on developing what it calls "low-power brain-machine interfaces".
The cosmopolitan Analog VLSI MIT team reflects the kind of international talent that MIT hopes to nurture in country specific programs it has operated since 1994 in China, Japan, Israel, India, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Spain.
Sarpeshkar's MIT team, for instance, includes Scott Arfin, Benjamin Rapoport, Lorenzo Turicchia, Micah O'Halloran from the US; Serhii M. Zhak from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, Russia; Soumyajit Mandal from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, Keng-Hoong Wee from Tohoku University, Japan; and Woradorn Wattanapanitch from Thailand.
So far, their brain-machine interfaces work to combine the human physical structure and 21st century technology has produced:
A new generation of high performance, low-power devices that mimic the communicating relationship of the mind, brain and human limbs, to help paralysis patients, the blind, and victims of Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. These ultra-low power brain-machine devices can run for 10 years or more, compared to current bulky devices that are 100-10,000 times more power and often lack wireless capabilities.
The Bionic Ear project to design advanced ultra-low-power cochlear-implant systems that also enable the deaf to hear music and tonal languages such as Chinese and other East Asian languages. Tonal languages use variations in tone, or pitch, to express different meanings of words. For example, the Mandarin word "ba" can be used with four different intonations to mean "eight", "to uproot", "to hold" and "a harrow". In contrast, English is a stress or accent-oriented language.
"Biological systems have developed over hundreds of millions of years of evolution to perform sensory, motor and chemical tasks extremely efficiently and robustly while using very little power, in very little volumes, and in real time," said Sarpeshkar, who sees his research as just the beginning of a journey for many more efficient, adaptable and cost-effective technologies to be developed from biology.
The RF Cochlea device demonstrates what can happen when researchers take inspiration from fields outside their own, said Sarpeshkar. "Healthcare is a natural area for applying biologically inspired technologies since we are trying to engineer systems that perform the normal functions of biological ones, so mimicking the biology can be helpful in fixing it."
Sarpeshkar's work also reflects the rewards that come by way of those daring to walk the rarely trodden path. "I have followed my heart in my work, and in my love for science," he said.
Sustainable Development of India – A Gandhian Approach
By Anil K. Rajvanshi
The energy situation in India is quite alarming. Energy is the basis of all activities. From it flow activities in agricultural, economic and social areas. Without adequate energy, the development of the country is jeopardized resulting in economic stagnation and hence in tremendous internal upheavals. Consider the following facts:
In 2001-02 India imported petroleum products worth Rs. 70,000 crore1 . The demand of petroleum products in the country is increasing at 7-8% per annum thereby further increasing the imports and jeopardizing the security of the country.
It is a matter of shame for all of us that even after 55 years of independence there are around 65% of all rural households in India who have no electricity2 . The electricity shortfall in India is estimated to be 15000 MW and the Government of India does not have money to install this additional capacity. India requires about 140,000 MW of additional capacity by the year 2010, with an estimated outlay of about Rs. 5,50,000 crore. Because of tremendous shortage of electricity, industrial growth and general life in the country is seriously affected3. Moreover with any problems in the national grid, rural areas are affected most, since the state electricity boards provide urban areas with electricity on priority basis.
In the ghettos of Delhi and Surat (the twelfth largest city and the fastest growing city in India with a population of about 2 million) about 500 people died of dengue fever in 1996 and of plague in 1994 respectively. This was a direct consequence of extremely unhygienic, filthy and overcrowded conditions prevalent in the two cities. The ghettos are composed of migrant laborers from rural areas. The plague epidemic had a very negative effect on foreign investment in India4 .
In Mumbai, in 1992 about 400 people died and property worth crores of rupees was looted and destroyed as an aftermath of destruction of Babri mosque located 2000 km away in a remote town of Uttar Pradesh. Similarly large number of people in Gujarat were killed in 2001 because of communal violence. The events had little to do with the purported cause but were due to a release of pent-up emotions of a population which is mostly made up of migrants from rural areas and who live in overcrowded and increasingly difficult conditions. The events in Mumbai (the commercial capital of India) and Gujarat had a very negative effect on international and local investment5. The effects are felt even today.
Between 1950 to 1995, Government of India spent Rs. 50,000 crores on surface irrigation projects, including storage facilities. Till today only 50% of these irrigation facilities, built at such an enormous cost, are being properly utilized. Hence most of the country routinely goes through the cycle of floods and droughts. And there is a perpetual shortage of drinking water in almost all the regions of the country. Besides, the increased use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides to sustain Green Revolution is reducing the fertility of land, thereby compounding the land-water management problem6 .
We are having exploding population, large-scale unemployment and corruption with nearly one third of the population living below poverty line.
There is a tremendous rise of fundamental militancy in the country, which is a direct result of poverty and unemployment.
Developing countries are spending between 2 and 8% of their GNP on medical costs related to declining environment. Thus in India, the number of premature deaths in cities due to environmental pollution is ~ 52,000/year and the number of hospitalizations (due to asthma and other lung-related diseases) was ~ 25 million last year. These casualties cost India about Rs. 4600 crore/year, which is equivalent to the cost of adding 1150 MW electricity to the grid every year7 .
We feel that these events are a direct consequence of lopsided development model that India has been following and which is leading to an undercurrent of economic discontent. The model is based on 50-100 year-old model of Western countries, which includes centralized energy production, development of megacities at the expense of rural areas and the unsustainable husbanding of land. This development model has led to high levels of unemployment and poor quality of life in rural India and large-scale exodus of the population to big cities. This exodus is the result of lack of sustainable agriculture in rural areas. Gandhiji had all along advocated a decentralized model and we feel that had we followed it just after independence our situation might have been much better than today.
It can also be argued that the above situation and events have come about because of mismanagement by and corruption in the Indian Government. But it is our belief that the centralized big-government model in developing countries inherently leads to corruption and mismanagement.
Agriculture is mostly dependent on energy. Lack of energy is therefore the single-most important reason for decline of agriculture-based activity and hence the economic activity in rural areas. A sustainable food and energy strategy for rural areas will therefore create new economic activity and can stem the desperate exodus to cities. With an ever-increasing unmet demand for goods and services, because of economic reasons, a great chasm is developing between haves and have-nots, which is resulting in conflict and a general unrest in the country. The present slowdown in Indian economy is also creating large-scale unemployment and could further create frightening scenarios of social instability if timely correction is not made.
The increase in demand for goods has also led to a sharp increase in energy usage, both in urban and rural areas. With increased penetration of electronic media, the citizens of developing countries aspire for quality of life available in developed countries. Sometimes one wonders whether the wasteful Western quality of life is better and desirable. For example, the US alone is contributing 30% of global green house gas pollution8 . However, if all the people in developing countries like India and China (40% of mankind) have energy consumption similar to that in U.S. or Europe, then it will have a disastrous effect on the world economy and environment. Thus there are estimates that oil energy consumption in developing countries could surpass that in developed countries within 20 years 9. This will create great conflict among nations and it is quite possible that in future the wars will be fought over energy resources. The present crisis in Iraq is basically an oil war. There is, therefore, a need for an alternative development model based upon renewable energies, which is decentralized and takes into account the aspirations of the rural population.
Historically, it has been shown that the quality of life is proportional to the per capita energy consumption. Energy consumption of a country can be broken into two parts -- the cumulative energy consumption EI = ò Ec dt, where Ec is energy consumption of the country at any point in time and EII - the energy consumption per capita per year. EI goes in building infrastructure like roads, bridges, power plants, communication networks, etc. During the early and middle parts of this century, developing countries because of historical reasons (most of them were colonized), had very little of EI. Thus it is difficult for them to reach the U.S. or European quality of life, even if EII somehow becomes available. Since the lifestyle in Western countries is unattainable, we should try to develop an alternative lifestyle in India.
I think a lifestyle based on the maxim of ‘simple living and high thinking’ is a possible choice. Thus our ancient philosophical thought should be used to temper our greed for resources and energy. Gandhiji showed that with minimum needs and energy he was capable of producing the highest quality of thought. This has also been the tradition of our great saints10 . India has a great tradition of spirituality. Spirituality and sustainable development can go hand in hand11. Spirituality helps in keeping our greed for materials and resources in check and sustainable development can take place when we use the resources for our needs and not for our greed as Gandhiji once said. Spirituality also helps us have a compassionate view of nature, which prevents us from overexploiting it. It also tempers fundamentalist mentality and helps us live in harmony with each other thereby enabling us to work together for common good. Spirituality and efficient technology are complementary because both allow the realization of end result with least amount of materials and energy. I believe that a combination of high technology together with the spiritual growth guided by the traditions of India will be a new paradigm of sustainable development for the country. The Gandhian model may be difficult to follow, but it shows the way towards low energy development strategy.
In India about 75% of the population lives in rural and semi-urban areas. It is estimated that for the next 50 years or so, the major part of population in India and other developing countries will still be village-based. Hence rather than pumping in huge resources in urban areas where the quality of life is becoming worse by continuing on the present path, it is much better to improve the quality of life in rural areas through an alternative model based upon sustainable growth and renewable energy.
In the past, most development efforts for rural poor have focused on villages. But because of inadequate infrastructure, income-generating capability and economic power, they have become sinks for development funds. There are a large number of examples the world over where well- meaning development efforts in small villages have not yielded the desired results. Villages are small but they are unsustainable. Cities in developing countries on the other hand may have rapid growth and development, but they have an ugly growth pattern. Therefore a middle path model based on taluka development is being proposed for a sustainable rural society.
Gandhiji always talked about his dream village. However he was never able to spell out exactly what that village will be. Being not conversant with economic and technological issues he probably did not have the language to express his dream about the ideal village. However being an extremely enlightened person he intuitively realized that it should be a unit, which will give employment, money and general wellbeing to its citizens. That we feel is possible with an energy and food self sufficient Taluka.
WHAT IS A TALUKA?
A taluka is an administrative block generally comprising about 90-100 contiguous villages, with a small town as its headquarters. On an average 8 to 10 talukas make up a district. For example, in Maharashtra state there are 30 districts and 236 talukas. The average area of a taluka is ~ 1000-1500 km2 and its total population is between 200,000 to 250,000. The town population is about 50,000. Data on commercial energy usage show that on an average a taluka consumes about 10-15 MW of electricity and about 10-15 million litres/year of petroleum products12 . There are about 3342 talukas in India. The major economic activity in a Taluka is primarily agriculture-based.
Since the geographical boundaries of a taluka are fixed, it can be thought of as a closed biomass and rainwater basin. It is the thesis of the author that a taluka can produce a majority of its demand of food, fuel, fodder and fertilizer from the natural resources and agro-based material available in it and hence the development can be truly sustainable. For some talukas that do not have sufficient biomass, other energy sources like solar and wind can be used to produce energy.
WHY A TALUKA-BASED MODEL?
Societies are living and dynamic structures. In an evolutionary process they can be thought to follow the laws of a natural living system. The hallmark of evolution of a dynamic system is its size reduction; increase in energy usage efficiency; increase in complexity; possession of critical mass, and its "punctuated equilibrium" with the surroundings. In the "punctuated equilibrium" phase, the system stabilizes for a certain time13 . One of the crucial conditions for the evolution of a dynamic system is the availability of critical mass. The critical mass enables the system to process materials and energy through it and hence allows it to grow. If the critical mass is not available, the system does not grow and dies-off.
Societies can also be thought to be like Prigogine’s dissipative structures14 . For example, a convection cell in a body of water heated from below is a dissipative structure and is energy- dependent. The resulting shape of these structures therefore depends on the quality and quantity of energy passing through them14 . The systems possessing a critical mass grow with energy input and go through a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ phase after which they become unstable and collapse into smaller systems. These small systems then coalesce through time and again form a critical mass and the cycle continues.
However for the societal systems to grow in a sustainable manner, certain conditions have to be fulfilled. Thus sustainable systems can be compared to a chair15 . The four legs of this chair can be thought to be made of four activities; Energy, Economic, Environmental and Equity (social/cultural issues). All of them have to be of equal size for comfortable sitting and interconnected to provide stability. The base (seat) has to be of the right size. Too big a base will make the chair sag and too small will make it unstable. Correct base size can therefore be thought of as the critical mass.
It is our thesis that because of its population size and its fairly developed infrastructure, a taluka has the ability to form a critical mass for a sustainable society for developing countries. With proper use of its agricultural and natural resources, it can produce food, feed and fertilizer in a self-reliant, environmentally sound and economically attractive manner. Hence it can provide the four legs of the chair for sustainable development. As the energy and other resources available are decentralized in nature, a taluka can form an appropriate ‘dissipative structure’ and can remain in ‘punctuated equilibrium’ phase.
From the above evolutionary model it can also be conjectured that in future, with the increasing use of renewable energy, all societies will evolve to be decentralized, high technology-dependent and village-based. Similarly, the mega-cities will break into smaller sustainable units. India is already a village-based decentralized society. Hence, instead of following the mega-city-based model, it is better to arrest this trend by introducing high- technology systems in a taluka. These high-technology systems may include internet connectivity, desktop-manufacturing units, and micropower production systems like microturbines and fuel cells.
TALUKA MODEL
India produces in its Talukas ~ 400 million tons/year of agricultural residues which theoretically can produce ~ 53,000 MW of power via biomass-based power plants12. This power is 70% of the total amount available in the country at present from all other sources3 . Not only can these residues produce adequate power to supplement existing power production, but husbanding this resource properly can also produce adequate animal feed and fertilizer. With increasing food production, the quantity of agricultural residues will also increase. Its judicious use will improve the rural economy and the quality of land. However, this agricultural residue is spread all over the country and is dispersed. This points towards decentralized power production systems.
Besides producing power, the challenge is also to maintain high quality and productivity of land so that food, animal feed, fertilizer and fuel could be produced in a sustainable manner from it. For this, water and soil conservation has to be implemented. It is possible to achieve this by rainwater harvesting and by planting trees and grasses and general management of biomass resources in the talukas. As the economic returns will be directly dependent on the increased biomass production, the landowners in a taluka will take up such measures readily. The strategy will also help increase the income of the farmers (since they will get money from residues which are presently wasted), will provide jobs for laborers in each taluka to collect residues and will create employment in other biomass-based industries. It is estimated that each taluka can create about 30,000 new jobs from such activities16 .
Following this approach an Energy self-sufficient taluka model was developed16. This model was developed for Phaltan taluka. However we feel that this methodology can be easily used for other talukas in the country. The strategy for taking care of energy needs was based on biomass resources. Based upon the historical data of energy needs for Phaltan taluka it was found (as of 1995) that in 2000, it would require about 13 X 108 MJ of electricity and about 26 million litres of petroleum products (diesel, petrol and kerosene)16. It was also shown that all this energy could be easily met by biomass-based power plants, production of ethanol from sweet sorghum and from existing distilleries, and pyrolysis oil production from agricultural residues and energy plantations. Electricity from biomass-based power plants would replace the MSEB- supplied electricity, while ethanol and pyrolysis oil would replace the liquid petroleum products. The technology for producing all these products already exists17. This study also showed that with a capital input of Rs. 300 crore, Phaltan taluka can produce wealth of Rs. 220 crore/year and provide employment to about 30,000 people year-round. Thus the talukas in India have the potential of creating 10 crore new jobs and Rs. 7,26,000 crore wealth.
This benchmark study became the basis of national policy on energy self-sufficient talukas and was adopted by the Government of India in 1996 (ref. 11). As a part of this policy, presently all the states in India are collecting data on availability of biomass residues in their talukas. This study therefore showed that it is possible to provide all the energy needs of a taluka from its own resources, thereby pointing towards sustainability.
One of the tragedies of rural areas in India and other developing countries has been the lack of production of value-added goods. This has resulted in very little remuneration to the farmers and hence the depletion of rural wealth. We feel that a taluka provides a critical mass for production of agro-based value-added products. With availability of power and raw materials (agriculture-based), fertilizers, chemicals, processed food products, etc., can be produced. With smart ‘bench-top’ production facilities available in future, it may be possible to produce substantial amounts of locally consumed items. This will further help in increasing the wealth of a taluka and in creating extra employment. Recently, micropower projects like gas-based microturbines and fuel cells are becoming available17. They will further usher in an era of efficient small-scale manufacturing facilities. Identification and evaluation of such cutting-edge technologies for both agro-based industries and consumer products will help talukas leap-frog into the modern age.
Another natural resource, which is extremely necessary, for making Taluka program a reality is water. Sufficient water and energy can provide the energy and food security for the country. Large scale and centralized water schemes have not brought the desired result. There is therefore a need to promote decentralized water utilities for rural areas. The NARI study also showed that rain water harvesting in Phaltan talukas could yield 4 to 5 times more water than the existing resource (canal). The cost of water from such microutilities would be 1 paise/litre17.
POLICY ISSUES
The following policy issues will have to be addressed before the Taluka model becomes a reality:
- A policy decision will have to be made by the Government of India to set up a Taluka Development Corporation and invite private-sector participation in setting up power and water utilities in talukas. A partnership among the corporate sector, local NGOs and the government can be a new paradigm for rural development.
- A policy will also have to formulated so that the corporate sector will not only produce power/water, but will also be allowed to carry out its distribution. Most of the independent power projects have been bogged down by the disputes regarding distribution. Only possession of distribution rights will allow the utilities to make money and give good service. The local people managing their own affairs is on the Gandhian line of thinking.
Since both power and water production is from renewable sources (biomass and rain), existing norms, tax benefits and soft loans applicable to renewable energy sources should be made available to the corporate sector involved in the taluka program.
It is our thesis that in a democratic society like India, sustainable taluka development will decentralize economic and hence political power. Decentralization of economic and political power is the best bet against economic deprivation, corruption and unaccountable ruling elite and can be the engine for internal peace, stability and development of a compassionate society. It is my belief that development and democracy work best in a decentralized power structure, a message that was constantly preached by Gandhiji. I also feel that the taluka plan has the potential of producing a sustainable society for one-fifth of mankind (India’s population) and in the process can show the world a new way.
One of the great strengths of India is that the majority of its people can be satisfied with a few material comforts. This strength can become useful in the paradigm outlined in this paper. In a democratic setup, one cannot force the population into a certain lifestyle. But the existing traditions, norms, strengths etc. can be used to guide the society into sustainable living - a dream that was always projected by Gandhiji.
The energy situation in India is quite alarming. Energy is the basis of all activities. From it flow activities in agricultural, economic and social areas. Without adequate energy, the development of the country is jeopardized resulting in economic stagnation and hence in tremendous internal upheavals. Consider the following facts:
In 2001-02 India imported petroleum products worth Rs. 70,000 crore1 . The demand of petroleum products in the country is increasing at 7-8% per annum thereby further increasing the imports and jeopardizing the security of the country.
It is a matter of shame for all of us that even after 55 years of independence there are around 65% of all rural households in India who have no electricity2 . The electricity shortfall in India is estimated to be 15000 MW and the Government of India does not have money to install this additional capacity. India requires about 140,000 MW of additional capacity by the year 2010, with an estimated outlay of about Rs. 5,50,000 crore. Because of tremendous shortage of electricity, industrial growth and general life in the country is seriously affected3. Moreover with any problems in the national grid, rural areas are affected most, since the state electricity boards provide urban areas with electricity on priority basis.
In the ghettos of Delhi and Surat (the twelfth largest city and the fastest growing city in India with a population of about 2 million) about 500 people died of dengue fever in 1996 and of plague in 1994 respectively. This was a direct consequence of extremely unhygienic, filthy and overcrowded conditions prevalent in the two cities. The ghettos are composed of migrant laborers from rural areas. The plague epidemic had a very negative effect on foreign investment in India4 .
In Mumbai, in 1992 about 400 people died and property worth crores of rupees was looted and destroyed as an aftermath of destruction of Babri mosque located 2000 km away in a remote town of Uttar Pradesh. Similarly large number of people in Gujarat were killed in 2001 because of communal violence. The events had little to do with the purported cause but were due to a release of pent-up emotions of a population which is mostly made up of migrants from rural areas and who live in overcrowded and increasingly difficult conditions. The events in Mumbai (the commercial capital of India) and Gujarat had a very negative effect on international and local investment5. The effects are felt even today.
Between 1950 to 1995, Government of India spent Rs. 50,000 crores on surface irrigation projects, including storage facilities. Till today only 50% of these irrigation facilities, built at such an enormous cost, are being properly utilized. Hence most of the country routinely goes through the cycle of floods and droughts. And there is a perpetual shortage of drinking water in almost all the regions of the country. Besides, the increased use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides to sustain Green Revolution is reducing the fertility of land, thereby compounding the land-water management problem6 .
We are having exploding population, large-scale unemployment and corruption with nearly one third of the population living below poverty line.
There is a tremendous rise of fundamental militancy in the country, which is a direct result of poverty and unemployment.
Developing countries are spending between 2 and 8% of their GNP on medical costs related to declining environment. Thus in India, the number of premature deaths in cities due to environmental pollution is ~ 52,000/year and the number of hospitalizations (due to asthma and other lung-related diseases) was ~ 25 million last year. These casualties cost India about Rs. 4600 crore/year, which is equivalent to the cost of adding 1150 MW electricity to the grid every year7 .
We feel that these events are a direct consequence of lopsided development model that India has been following and which is leading to an undercurrent of economic discontent. The model is based on 50-100 year-old model of Western countries, which includes centralized energy production, development of megacities at the expense of rural areas and the unsustainable husbanding of land. This development model has led to high levels of unemployment and poor quality of life in rural India and large-scale exodus of the population to big cities. This exodus is the result of lack of sustainable agriculture in rural areas. Gandhiji had all along advocated a decentralized model and we feel that had we followed it just after independence our situation might have been much better than today.
It can also be argued that the above situation and events have come about because of mismanagement by and corruption in the Indian Government. But it is our belief that the centralized big-government model in developing countries inherently leads to corruption and mismanagement.
Agriculture is mostly dependent on energy. Lack of energy is therefore the single-most important reason for decline of agriculture-based activity and hence the economic activity in rural areas. A sustainable food and energy strategy for rural areas will therefore create new economic activity and can stem the desperate exodus to cities. With an ever-increasing unmet demand for goods and services, because of economic reasons, a great chasm is developing between haves and have-nots, which is resulting in conflict and a general unrest in the country. The present slowdown in Indian economy is also creating large-scale unemployment and could further create frightening scenarios of social instability if timely correction is not made.
The increase in demand for goods has also led to a sharp increase in energy usage, both in urban and rural areas. With increased penetration of electronic media, the citizens of developing countries aspire for quality of life available in developed countries. Sometimes one wonders whether the wasteful Western quality of life is better and desirable. For example, the US alone is contributing 30% of global green house gas pollution8 . However, if all the people in developing countries like India and China (40% of mankind) have energy consumption similar to that in U.S. or Europe, then it will have a disastrous effect on the world economy and environment. Thus there are estimates that oil energy consumption in developing countries could surpass that in developed countries within 20 years 9. This will create great conflict among nations and it is quite possible that in future the wars will be fought over energy resources. The present crisis in Iraq is basically an oil war. There is, therefore, a need for an alternative development model based upon renewable energies, which is decentralized and takes into account the aspirations of the rural population.
Historically, it has been shown that the quality of life is proportional to the per capita energy consumption. Energy consumption of a country can be broken into two parts -- the cumulative energy consumption EI = ò Ec dt, where Ec is energy consumption of the country at any point in time and EII - the energy consumption per capita per year. EI goes in building infrastructure like roads, bridges, power plants, communication networks, etc. During the early and middle parts of this century, developing countries because of historical reasons (most of them were colonized), had very little of EI. Thus it is difficult for them to reach the U.S. or European quality of life, even if EII somehow becomes available. Since the lifestyle in Western countries is unattainable, we should try to develop an alternative lifestyle in India.
I think a lifestyle based on the maxim of ‘simple living and high thinking’ is a possible choice. Thus our ancient philosophical thought should be used to temper our greed for resources and energy. Gandhiji showed that with minimum needs and energy he was capable of producing the highest quality of thought. This has also been the tradition of our great saints10 . India has a great tradition of spirituality. Spirituality and sustainable development can go hand in hand11. Spirituality helps in keeping our greed for materials and resources in check and sustainable development can take place when we use the resources for our needs and not for our greed as Gandhiji once said. Spirituality also helps us have a compassionate view of nature, which prevents us from overexploiting it. It also tempers fundamentalist mentality and helps us live in harmony with each other thereby enabling us to work together for common good. Spirituality and efficient technology are complementary because both allow the realization of end result with least amount of materials and energy. I believe that a combination of high technology together with the spiritual growth guided by the traditions of India will be a new paradigm of sustainable development for the country. The Gandhian model may be difficult to follow, but it shows the way towards low energy development strategy.
In India about 75% of the population lives in rural and semi-urban areas. It is estimated that for the next 50 years or so, the major part of population in India and other developing countries will still be village-based. Hence rather than pumping in huge resources in urban areas where the quality of life is becoming worse by continuing on the present path, it is much better to improve the quality of life in rural areas through an alternative model based upon sustainable growth and renewable energy.
In the past, most development efforts for rural poor have focused on villages. But because of inadequate infrastructure, income-generating capability and economic power, they have become sinks for development funds. There are a large number of examples the world over where well- meaning development efforts in small villages have not yielded the desired results. Villages are small but they are unsustainable. Cities in developing countries on the other hand may have rapid growth and development, but they have an ugly growth pattern. Therefore a middle path model based on taluka development is being proposed for a sustainable rural society.
Gandhiji always talked about his dream village. However he was never able to spell out exactly what that village will be. Being not conversant with economic and technological issues he probably did not have the language to express his dream about the ideal village. However being an extremely enlightened person he intuitively realized that it should be a unit, which will give employment, money and general wellbeing to its citizens. That we feel is possible with an energy and food self sufficient Taluka.
WHAT IS A TALUKA?
A taluka is an administrative block generally comprising about 90-100 contiguous villages, with a small town as its headquarters. On an average 8 to 10 talukas make up a district. For example, in Maharashtra state there are 30 districts and 236 talukas. The average area of a taluka is ~ 1000-1500 km2 and its total population is between 200,000 to 250,000. The town population is about 50,000. Data on commercial energy usage show that on an average a taluka consumes about 10-15 MW of electricity and about 10-15 million litres/year of petroleum products12 . There are about 3342 talukas in India. The major economic activity in a Taluka is primarily agriculture-based.
Since the geographical boundaries of a taluka are fixed, it can be thought of as a closed biomass and rainwater basin. It is the thesis of the author that a taluka can produce a majority of its demand of food, fuel, fodder and fertilizer from the natural resources and agro-based material available in it and hence the development can be truly sustainable. For some talukas that do not have sufficient biomass, other energy sources like solar and wind can be used to produce energy.
WHY A TALUKA-BASED MODEL?
Societies are living and dynamic structures. In an evolutionary process they can be thought to follow the laws of a natural living system. The hallmark of evolution of a dynamic system is its size reduction; increase in energy usage efficiency; increase in complexity; possession of critical mass, and its "punctuated equilibrium" with the surroundings. In the "punctuated equilibrium" phase, the system stabilizes for a certain time13 . One of the crucial conditions for the evolution of a dynamic system is the availability of critical mass. The critical mass enables the system to process materials and energy through it and hence allows it to grow. If the critical mass is not available, the system does not grow and dies-off.
Societies can also be thought to be like Prigogine’s dissipative structures14 . For example, a convection cell in a body of water heated from below is a dissipative structure and is energy- dependent. The resulting shape of these structures therefore depends on the quality and quantity of energy passing through them14 . The systems possessing a critical mass grow with energy input and go through a ‘punctuated equilibrium’ phase after which they become unstable and collapse into smaller systems. These small systems then coalesce through time and again form a critical mass and the cycle continues.
However for the societal systems to grow in a sustainable manner, certain conditions have to be fulfilled. Thus sustainable systems can be compared to a chair15 . The four legs of this chair can be thought to be made of four activities; Energy, Economic, Environmental and Equity (social/cultural issues). All of them have to be of equal size for comfortable sitting and interconnected to provide stability. The base (seat) has to be of the right size. Too big a base will make the chair sag and too small will make it unstable. Correct base size can therefore be thought of as the critical mass.
It is our thesis that because of its population size and its fairly developed infrastructure, a taluka has the ability to form a critical mass for a sustainable society for developing countries. With proper use of its agricultural and natural resources, it can produce food, feed and fertilizer in a self-reliant, environmentally sound and economically attractive manner. Hence it can provide the four legs of the chair for sustainable development. As the energy and other resources available are decentralized in nature, a taluka can form an appropriate ‘dissipative structure’ and can remain in ‘punctuated equilibrium’ phase.
From the above evolutionary model it can also be conjectured that in future, with the increasing use of renewable energy, all societies will evolve to be decentralized, high technology-dependent and village-based. Similarly, the mega-cities will break into smaller sustainable units. India is already a village-based decentralized society. Hence, instead of following the mega-city-based model, it is better to arrest this trend by introducing high- technology systems in a taluka. These high-technology systems may include internet connectivity, desktop-manufacturing units, and micropower production systems like microturbines and fuel cells.
TALUKA MODEL
India produces in its Talukas ~ 400 million tons/year of agricultural residues which theoretically can produce ~ 53,000 MW of power via biomass-based power plants12. This power is 70% of the total amount available in the country at present from all other sources3 . Not only can these residues produce adequate power to supplement existing power production, but husbanding this resource properly can also produce adequate animal feed and fertilizer. With increasing food production, the quantity of agricultural residues will also increase. Its judicious use will improve the rural economy and the quality of land. However, this agricultural residue is spread all over the country and is dispersed. This points towards decentralized power production systems.
Besides producing power, the challenge is also to maintain high quality and productivity of land so that food, animal feed, fertilizer and fuel could be produced in a sustainable manner from it. For this, water and soil conservation has to be implemented. It is possible to achieve this by rainwater harvesting and by planting trees and grasses and general management of biomass resources in the talukas. As the economic returns will be directly dependent on the increased biomass production, the landowners in a taluka will take up such measures readily. The strategy will also help increase the income of the farmers (since they will get money from residues which are presently wasted), will provide jobs for laborers in each taluka to collect residues and will create employment in other biomass-based industries. It is estimated that each taluka can create about 30,000 new jobs from such activities16 .
Following this approach an Energy self-sufficient taluka model was developed16. This model was developed for Phaltan taluka. However we feel that this methodology can be easily used for other talukas in the country. The strategy for taking care of energy needs was based on biomass resources. Based upon the historical data of energy needs for Phaltan taluka it was found (as of 1995) that in 2000, it would require about 13 X 108 MJ of electricity and about 26 million litres of petroleum products (diesel, petrol and kerosene)16. It was also shown that all this energy could be easily met by biomass-based power plants, production of ethanol from sweet sorghum and from existing distilleries, and pyrolysis oil production from agricultural residues and energy plantations. Electricity from biomass-based power plants would replace the MSEB- supplied electricity, while ethanol and pyrolysis oil would replace the liquid petroleum products. The technology for producing all these products already exists17. This study also showed that with a capital input of Rs. 300 crore, Phaltan taluka can produce wealth of Rs. 220 crore/year and provide employment to about 30,000 people year-round. Thus the talukas in India have the potential of creating 10 crore new jobs and Rs. 7,26,000 crore wealth.
This benchmark study became the basis of national policy on energy self-sufficient talukas and was adopted by the Government of India in 1996 (ref. 11). As a part of this policy, presently all the states in India are collecting data on availability of biomass residues in their talukas. This study therefore showed that it is possible to provide all the energy needs of a taluka from its own resources, thereby pointing towards sustainability.
One of the tragedies of rural areas in India and other developing countries has been the lack of production of value-added goods. This has resulted in very little remuneration to the farmers and hence the depletion of rural wealth. We feel that a taluka provides a critical mass for production of agro-based value-added products. With availability of power and raw materials (agriculture-based), fertilizers, chemicals, processed food products, etc., can be produced. With smart ‘bench-top’ production facilities available in future, it may be possible to produce substantial amounts of locally consumed items. This will further help in increasing the wealth of a taluka and in creating extra employment. Recently, micropower projects like gas-based microturbines and fuel cells are becoming available17. They will further usher in an era of efficient small-scale manufacturing facilities. Identification and evaluation of such cutting-edge technologies for both agro-based industries and consumer products will help talukas leap-frog into the modern age.
Another natural resource, which is extremely necessary, for making Taluka program a reality is water. Sufficient water and energy can provide the energy and food security for the country. Large scale and centralized water schemes have not brought the desired result. There is therefore a need to promote decentralized water utilities for rural areas. The NARI study also showed that rain water harvesting in Phaltan talukas could yield 4 to 5 times more water than the existing resource (canal). The cost of water from such microutilities would be 1 paise/litre17.
POLICY ISSUES
The following policy issues will have to be addressed before the Taluka model becomes a reality:
- A policy decision will have to be made by the Government of India to set up a Taluka Development Corporation and invite private-sector participation in setting up power and water utilities in talukas. A partnership among the corporate sector, local NGOs and the government can be a new paradigm for rural development.
- A policy will also have to formulated so that the corporate sector will not only produce power/water, but will also be allowed to carry out its distribution. Most of the independent power projects have been bogged down by the disputes regarding distribution. Only possession of distribution rights will allow the utilities to make money and give good service. The local people managing their own affairs is on the Gandhian line of thinking.
Since both power and water production is from renewable sources (biomass and rain), existing norms, tax benefits and soft loans applicable to renewable energy sources should be made available to the corporate sector involved in the taluka program.
It is our thesis that in a democratic society like India, sustainable taluka development will decentralize economic and hence political power. Decentralization of economic and political power is the best bet against economic deprivation, corruption and unaccountable ruling elite and can be the engine for internal peace, stability and development of a compassionate society. It is my belief that development and democracy work best in a decentralized power structure, a message that was constantly preached by Gandhiji. I also feel that the taluka plan has the potential of producing a sustainable society for one-fifth of mankind (India’s population) and in the process can show the world a new way.
One of the great strengths of India is that the majority of its people can be satisfied with a few material comforts. This strength can become useful in the paradigm outlined in this paper. In a democratic setup, one cannot force the population into a certain lifestyle. But the existing traditions, norms, strengths etc. can be used to guide the society into sustainable living - a dream that was always projected by Gandhiji.
VILLAGE OF MY DREAM
By Anil K. Rajvanshi
Gandhiji wrote and spoke extensively about his dream village but somehow was
never able to give a concrete plan or shape to his dreams. However intuitively he rightly realized that it would be a unit where all the things needed by villagers will be manufactured from the locally available resources. His village would therefore be self sufficient and sustainable. In those times of primitive technology his dream village was supposed to depend on human labor and hence his insistence on very simple and rudimentary technologies which could be made by villagers themselves.
However modern high technology allows for the first time to bring into reality the
dream village of Gandhiji. Such a village will be high tech, self reliant, sustainable and will provide its residents a high quality life.
Our villages have not changed very much since Gandhiji’s times. Thus about 55-60%
of India’s rural population has no electricity, very poor drinking water supply and majority of rural population uses 180 million tons of biomass every year as fuel for cooking through very primitive, inefficient and smoky chulhas. In states like U.P., Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh etc. some of the villages still exist in stone ages.
We cannot become the 3rd most prosperous country in the world, as some of our
national leaders are taking about, unless and until we bring 60% of our rural population into mainstream of development and provide a quantum jump to their quality of life.
One of the best ways to do so is by providing adequate electricity to these areas.
This is an electricity age. Adequate and uninterrupted supply of electricity for lighting, agriculture, communication, entertainment and whole horde of other activities can transform the lives of rural population and bring in tremendous wealth to these areas. Modern high technology together with locally available resources, can provide a mechanism to do so.
The most abundant local resource in rural areas is biomass (agricultural residues,
weeds and other plant material). India produces in these areas about 600 million tons of agricultural residues/year, which can theoretically produce 70,000 MW of electric power.
However all these residues should go back to the soil to nurture it so that farm
productivity increases. If it is used for power generation then the soil will suffer. A much better way to both nurture the soil and produce power is to produce biogas from these residues. A high tech biogas producer can produce biogas with energy of about 13 MJ per kg of biomass, which is similar to that produced by burning these residues via a power plant. Most of the freshly harvested biomass has about 50% moisture content. For using it in power plants or gasifiers one has to reduce the moisture content to about 10-15%.
This requires lot of energy for drying the biomass. On the other hand the freshly harvested biomass can be directly fed into biogas reactors to produce biogas thereby saving considerable amount of energy and time. Besides the slurry from the biogas reactor produces excellent fertilizer and soil conditioner. This is the genesis of organic agriculture.
Farmers in India have realized that organic foods fetch good price. Hence there is a
major movement towards organic farming. Organic farming is environmentally sound and
sustainable way of producing food, since it incorporates integrated method of management which maintains the health of soil and its productivity. Farmers in developing countries who switch to organic agriculture also achieve higher earnings and a better standard of living. This can be further enhanced by the availability of excellent fertilizer from biogas reactors.
For biogas economy to succeed it is necessary to develop very efficient biogas
producers. Biogas has been used extensively in rural areas and is produced very inefficiently in fixed and floating dome systems, requiring considerable amount of cowdung and other nitrogenous material. It is therefore not suitable for a household with less than 3-4 cattle.
Besides there are problems of gas production during winter and improper mixing of inputs like biomass, night soil, cowdung, etc.
Thus R&D is necessary in the development of extremely efficient biogas reactors so
that the production/unit of biomass inputs could be maximized. This can be done by properly maintaining pH of the slurry, temperature and other biochemical indicators. Thus the biogas plant becomes a sophisticated biochemical reactor. Use of genetically engineered microbes can also increase gas production efficiency. Thus a scenario can be thought of whereby a village level micro-utility company can be set up in rural areas which will buy locally available raw materials like cowdung, biomass, etc. and will use them in these reactors for power generation and supply the gas for cooking and other purposes.
Europe, which is in the forefront of biogas technology, has an installed electric
generating capacity of about 2500 MW from biogas alone. They use very efficient and
sophisticated reactors. There are reports of fleet of cars and buses running in various European countries on compressed biogas. The raw gas, which is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, is scrubbed to remove carbon dioxide and the resulting methane is compressed to 200-bar pressure for use in automotive applications. In Sweden an experimental train is being run on compressed biogas. A similar concept but on a smaller scale can be thought of for a village where extra biogas can be used for running modified autorickshaws and two wheelers for transport.
Our Institute Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) has developed a strategy
whereby biogas powered diesel gensets can also produce clean drinking water as a byproduct.
Thus the strategy of using locally available agricultural residues based biogas
gensets will produce electric power, excellent fertilizer and clean drinking water for the village. Besides the excess biogas can also be used to provide clean cooking fuel for villagers. This is true sustainability and may lead to Gandhiji’s dream villages.
Thus a village level utility company can set up a 500 kW biogas powered diesel
genset which can supply enough electricity for an average village with a population of 2000 - 3000.
In addition, the high temperature exhaust gases from these plants can easily distill or boil water via a suitably designed unit, which can be attached to the genset. A 500 kW power plant can therefore produce about hundred thousand liters of clean drinking water every day. In producing both electricity and clean water; the power plant efficiency will jump from the existing 35% to around 65%. Most of the energy of these gensets is lost in exhaust gases and cooling the engine. This energy can easily be utilized for distillation or boiling water.
The microutility company could own the plant, whose shares in turn could be owned
by villagers, and be managed professionally, without the political pit-falls of a cooperative society. The microutility could also lease village-level transmission lines and infrastructure from the local State Electricity Boards (SEBs) at a ‘social cost’, based on the cost of electricity most SEBs charge farmers.
In order for this strategy to succeed it is necessary to set up a national biogas
technology mission. This mission will help research institutes do R&D for high tech biogas reactors, provide soft loans for entrepreneurs to set up such microutilities and to encourage government, corporate sector and NGO partnership in this area.
Gandhiji wrote and spoke extensively about his dream village but somehow was
never able to give a concrete plan or shape to his dreams. However intuitively he rightly realized that it would be a unit where all the things needed by villagers will be manufactured from the locally available resources. His village would therefore be self sufficient and sustainable. In those times of primitive technology his dream village was supposed to depend on human labor and hence his insistence on very simple and rudimentary technologies which could be made by villagers themselves.
However modern high technology allows for the first time to bring into reality the
dream village of Gandhiji. Such a village will be high tech, self reliant, sustainable and will provide its residents a high quality life.
Our villages have not changed very much since Gandhiji’s times. Thus about 55-60%
of India’s rural population has no electricity, very poor drinking water supply and majority of rural population uses 180 million tons of biomass every year as fuel for cooking through very primitive, inefficient and smoky chulhas. In states like U.P., Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh etc. some of the villages still exist in stone ages.
We cannot become the 3rd most prosperous country in the world, as some of our
national leaders are taking about, unless and until we bring 60% of our rural population into mainstream of development and provide a quantum jump to their quality of life.
One of the best ways to do so is by providing adequate electricity to these areas.
This is an electricity age. Adequate and uninterrupted supply of electricity for lighting, agriculture, communication, entertainment and whole horde of other activities can transform the lives of rural population and bring in tremendous wealth to these areas. Modern high technology together with locally available resources, can provide a mechanism to do so.
The most abundant local resource in rural areas is biomass (agricultural residues,
weeds and other plant material). India produces in these areas about 600 million tons of agricultural residues/year, which can theoretically produce 70,000 MW of electric power.
However all these residues should go back to the soil to nurture it so that farm
productivity increases. If it is used for power generation then the soil will suffer. A much better way to both nurture the soil and produce power is to produce biogas from these residues. A high tech biogas producer can produce biogas with energy of about 13 MJ per kg of biomass, which is similar to that produced by burning these residues via a power plant. Most of the freshly harvested biomass has about 50% moisture content. For using it in power plants or gasifiers one has to reduce the moisture content to about 10-15%.
This requires lot of energy for drying the biomass. On the other hand the freshly harvested biomass can be directly fed into biogas reactors to produce biogas thereby saving considerable amount of energy and time. Besides the slurry from the biogas reactor produces excellent fertilizer and soil conditioner. This is the genesis of organic agriculture.
Farmers in India have realized that organic foods fetch good price. Hence there is a
major movement towards organic farming. Organic farming is environmentally sound and
sustainable way of producing food, since it incorporates integrated method of management which maintains the health of soil and its productivity. Farmers in developing countries who switch to organic agriculture also achieve higher earnings and a better standard of living. This can be further enhanced by the availability of excellent fertilizer from biogas reactors.
For biogas economy to succeed it is necessary to develop very efficient biogas
producers. Biogas has been used extensively in rural areas and is produced very inefficiently in fixed and floating dome systems, requiring considerable amount of cowdung and other nitrogenous material. It is therefore not suitable for a household with less than 3-4 cattle.
Besides there are problems of gas production during winter and improper mixing of inputs like biomass, night soil, cowdung, etc.
Thus R&D is necessary in the development of extremely efficient biogas reactors so
that the production/unit of biomass inputs could be maximized. This can be done by properly maintaining pH of the slurry, temperature and other biochemical indicators. Thus the biogas plant becomes a sophisticated biochemical reactor. Use of genetically engineered microbes can also increase gas production efficiency. Thus a scenario can be thought of whereby a village level micro-utility company can be set up in rural areas which will buy locally available raw materials like cowdung, biomass, etc. and will use them in these reactors for power generation and supply the gas for cooking and other purposes.
Europe, which is in the forefront of biogas technology, has an installed electric
generating capacity of about 2500 MW from biogas alone. They use very efficient and
sophisticated reactors. There are reports of fleet of cars and buses running in various European countries on compressed biogas. The raw gas, which is a mixture of methane and carbon dioxide, is scrubbed to remove carbon dioxide and the resulting methane is compressed to 200-bar pressure for use in automotive applications. In Sweden an experimental train is being run on compressed biogas. A similar concept but on a smaller scale can be thought of for a village where extra biogas can be used for running modified autorickshaws and two wheelers for transport.
Our Institute Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) has developed a strategy
whereby biogas powered diesel gensets can also produce clean drinking water as a byproduct.
Thus the strategy of using locally available agricultural residues based biogas
gensets will produce electric power, excellent fertilizer and clean drinking water for the village. Besides the excess biogas can also be used to provide clean cooking fuel for villagers. This is true sustainability and may lead to Gandhiji’s dream villages.
Thus a village level utility company can set up a 500 kW biogas powered diesel
genset which can supply enough electricity for an average village with a population of 2000 - 3000.
In addition, the high temperature exhaust gases from these plants can easily distill or boil water via a suitably designed unit, which can be attached to the genset. A 500 kW power plant can therefore produce about hundred thousand liters of clean drinking water every day. In producing both electricity and clean water; the power plant efficiency will jump from the existing 35% to around 65%. Most of the energy of these gensets is lost in exhaust gases and cooling the engine. This energy can easily be utilized for distillation or boiling water.
The microutility company could own the plant, whose shares in turn could be owned
by villagers, and be managed professionally, without the political pit-falls of a cooperative society. The microutility could also lease village-level transmission lines and infrastructure from the local State Electricity Boards (SEBs) at a ‘social cost’, based on the cost of electricity most SEBs charge farmers.
In order for this strategy to succeed it is necessary to set up a national biogas
technology mission. This mission will help research institutes do R&D for high tech biogas reactors, provide soft loans for entrepreneurs to set up such microutilities and to encourage government, corporate sector and NGO partnership in this area.
Gandhiji - a Votary of Sustainable living
By Anil K. Rajvanshi
Gandhiji not only gave us freedom but he also gave the world and us a new thought on nonviolence and sustainable living. His teachings and experiments are more valid today then ever especially when we are trying to find solutions to worldwide violence and runaway consumptive life style which is going to put a very heavy burden on the world's resources.
Through ages India has occasionally given to the world a new thought. Thus Buddhism, Jainism, Yogic system, Sikhism are part of great spiritual thought given by India from time to time. Gandhiji's message of nonviolence and sustainable living is a continuation of that long tradition.
Gandhiji was energy conservator par excellence. He lived in his ashrams without electricity or any modern amenities. His insistence on use of self-human labour for majority of needs was legendary and was usually frowned upon by his closest colleagues who thought it was anti progress and pushing back India to stone ages. Nevertheless his own life was a shining example of how with frugal living and with minimum energy needs he was capable of producing the highest quality of thought. Very few of us can live his exemplary life but Gandhiji showed that mental happiness and simple living could form the basis of sustainability. He believed that with simple living the resources of the planet earth can sustain us comfortably and his famous saying that earth provides us enough for our needs but not for our greed is extremely apt today.
Gandhiji was a highly evolved and spiritual human being. Politics came as a byproduct of spirituality and he considered it as his duty to help his countrymen and fellow beings. The spirit of Bhagwad Gita's Karma Yoga guided him in this endeavor. There are many instances of people who saw his glowing skin, aura, and felt the presence of his personality whenever they met him. That is only possible for a Yogi of very high order.
My father who was involved in the freedom struggle and went to jail with Gandhiji told of a remarkable instance. In early 1940's just before the quit India movement, a mammoth public meeting took place in Allahabad. About 5-10 lakh people were present. Gandhiji was late for the meeting. All the great leaders of independence movement were giving their speeches and trying to calm the crowd, which was quite restless. Then suddenly Gandhiji came, climbed on the dias and put a finger on his lips. A wave of silence swept the grounds starting from dias. My father termed it as a remarkable experience of the power of a small frail man over the masses.
Sometimes Gandhiji carried his energy conservation experiments too far. His experiments on conserving his sexual energy proved quite controversial. He was obviously following the age-old tradition of abstinence that yogis practice. Thus when at the age of 70 he had a wet dream he felt that his world had collapsed. He wrote about it and said that he felt ashamed of himself. Recent scientific evidence however has shown that our brains are full of sexual chemicals, which help in memory improvement and general well being. It is therefore possible that the practice of abstinence was done intuitively by yogis to conserve these chemicals to enhance their brain quality, which would help them in practice of yoga. More than the loss of chemicals, Gandhiji felt a lack of Sanyam and a loss of control over his purity of thought and hence his anguish.
As a spiritual being and visionary Gandhiji was far ahead of his times. I am sure if he were alive today he would have felt that his dream village (about which he talked often) could have taken shape with the availability of internet connectivity, desktop manufacturing and small renewable energy power packs. His dream of giving employment and decent life to rural population may become possible with the availability of these energy efficient and high tech systems. Hence if we follow his maxim of simple living and high thinking then it is possible to have a decentralized high tech rural society and India can again show the world a new path in sustainable living.
Gandhiji not only gave us freedom but he also gave the world and us a new thought on nonviolence and sustainable living. His teachings and experiments are more valid today then ever especially when we are trying to find solutions to worldwide violence and runaway consumptive life style which is going to put a very heavy burden on the world's resources.Through ages India has occasionally given to the world a new thought. Thus Buddhism, Jainism, Yogic system, Sikhism are part of great spiritual thought given by India from time to time. Gandhiji's message of nonviolence and sustainable living is a continuation of that long tradition.
Gandhiji was energy conservator par excellence. He lived in his ashrams without electricity or any modern amenities. His insistence on use of self-human labour for majority of needs was legendary and was usually frowned upon by his closest colleagues who thought it was anti progress and pushing back India to stone ages. Nevertheless his own life was a shining example of how with frugal living and with minimum energy needs he was capable of producing the highest quality of thought. Very few of us can live his exemplary life but Gandhiji showed that mental happiness and simple living could form the basis of sustainability. He believed that with simple living the resources of the planet earth can sustain us comfortably and his famous saying that earth provides us enough for our needs but not for our greed is extremely apt today.
Gandhiji was a highly evolved and spiritual human being. Politics came as a byproduct of spirituality and he considered it as his duty to help his countrymen and fellow beings. The spirit of Bhagwad Gita's Karma Yoga guided him in this endeavor. There are many instances of people who saw his glowing skin, aura, and felt the presence of his personality whenever they met him. That is only possible for a Yogi of very high order.
My father who was involved in the freedom struggle and went to jail with Gandhiji told of a remarkable instance. In early 1940's just before the quit India movement, a mammoth public meeting took place in Allahabad. About 5-10 lakh people were present. Gandhiji was late for the meeting. All the great leaders of independence movement were giving their speeches and trying to calm the crowd, which was quite restless. Then suddenly Gandhiji came, climbed on the dias and put a finger on his lips. A wave of silence swept the grounds starting from dias. My father termed it as a remarkable experience of the power of a small frail man over the masses.
Sometimes Gandhiji carried his energy conservation experiments too far. His experiments on conserving his sexual energy proved quite controversial. He was obviously following the age-old tradition of abstinence that yogis practice. Thus when at the age of 70 he had a wet dream he felt that his world had collapsed. He wrote about it and said that he felt ashamed of himself. Recent scientific evidence however has shown that our brains are full of sexual chemicals, which help in memory improvement and general well being. It is therefore possible that the practice of abstinence was done intuitively by yogis to conserve these chemicals to enhance their brain quality, which would help them in practice of yoga. More than the loss of chemicals, Gandhiji felt a lack of Sanyam and a loss of control over his purity of thought and hence his anguish.
As a spiritual being and visionary Gandhiji was far ahead of his times. I am sure if he were alive today he would have felt that his dream village (about which he talked often) could have taken shape with the availability of internet connectivity, desktop manufacturing and small renewable energy power packs. His dream of giving employment and decent life to rural population may become possible with the availability of these energy efficient and high tech systems. Hence if we follow his maxim of simple living and high thinking then it is possible to have a decentralized high tech rural society and India can again show the world a new path in sustainable living.
Rural Higher Education and Women
By Samiya Anwar
If somebody questions me, what is the best gift I received from my parents? I would probably say education. Yup! Because education is the biggest asset one can have. And for women it is more important. It is education what makes a women stand in society with the male counterparts.
I was fortunate to go to school and college. But unfortunately not all parents send their daughters to obtain education. Not all women are equal footing with men still today after so much of development.
It is a grim reality that living in urban, we don’t acknowledge the life of rustic women. What we people do is, give names to the rural women, ‘Anpad’, ‘Jahil’ and ‘Gavaar’. They are also identified as ‘hick’. It means a person rose in a rural area, an unsophisticated person. They are not intelligible persons, they are parochial and narrow-minded.
This is all observed due to a wide disparity in the literacy of urban and rural women. The historical image of ‘housewife’ silently rules the countryside. The literacy rate among rural women remained less though several efforts have been made on part of the government to deal with this subject.
Nearly 70 per cent of the population lived in rural areas and most rural women were illiterate and not at all aware of their rights. The reason could be the age-old negative typecast rural population thinking. The rate of illiteracy is high in rural areas due to their thinking patterns.
In India, the literacy level is the highest compared to anywhere else in the world. The reason for the growth of literacy is because of the umpteen numbers of various types of Colleges and Universities offering different kinds of education in various fields. Reason that education is an instrument for the social advancement. And in particular if rural-women are educated the problems of like poverty, unemployment, child labor, female foeticide, and many more can be resolved to higher extent.
Every year the college door opens for a number of students. Our country has plenty of Colleges and Universities offering higher education opportunities. The enrollment of rural girls for higher education is not in large. More girls in rural areas discontinue education to either get marry or become support for families by earning daily wage at countryside. The Higher Education remains a daydream to many of them.
Like Sarla, a rural woman had to dropout from higher studies for marriage at the age of 17. She says, ‘If given a chance in future she would still like to continue studies and become a teacher’. Her father had a different opinion. He questions, ‘why should I send my daughter to college? She will be a housewife in the future I knew. Now I am happy that she is married at the right time. There is no need of Higher Education’.
It is not just the father of Sarla, many parents in rural areas think the same way. The degree college is regarded as waste-of-time by rural people. The years between eighteen-twenty one are most important time. These years get squandered in college they say. What is the need to send girls for Higher Education? The basic education already they have, stop now. Enough is enough!
But is it good to stop the girls from achieving knowledge which is for their good. Is college means not putting time to good use? Then why most women go for higher studies even in thirties and forties. What makes women crave for achieving degrees in vocation? What does college really does to a girl and his mind? It is important for them to understand what is good and what is better.
The Higher Education is good. The college is a place of education. We go to college to know, to understand how knowledge is helpful and powerful. It makes our mind. It prepares us as citizens of the world. It is the most important part of youth. The years of learning is often misconceived as the years of romance due to the love affairs and rising love in college. This could be one reason why parents don’t want to send their daughter for Higher Education.
However the gender factors restrict the women from higher education and job opportunities. It is a disheartening that the males think that if women continue to higher education, she will compete with them economically. Education makes women to question. If they are less educated, they won’t know the laws and they can easily suppress them. An educated female questions why this, why not those. The problem arises for men. So they deprive females from higher education.
Another strong consideration in girls’ unequal access to education in rural areas includes a lack of a safe means of transportation, poor security, and the lack of separate sanitation facilities. It is significant that already statistical investigation in this country and in England shows that the standard of health is higher among the women who hold college degrees than among any other equal number of the same age and class.
Sociological surveys indicate that those who desire for higher education but are unable to enter the institute as a full-time student can view part-time study as a matter of urgency. The other surveys have noted that those women who already have a reasonable general education are the group most likely to continue their studies part-time. After the age of 24 many rural women more likely than men continue studying
Over the past two decades the rural education for women has been very impressive. It cannot be denied that rural girls and young women are attracted with higher education as a good employment is brought through education. Indeed rural women, have a lot of spunk and enthusiasm to study.
Focus on Rural Women’s Higher Education
11th five-year plan lay more focus on higher education with reference to areas of rural areas, and backward classes and women folks. By the end of the plan there should be an increase in the percentage of each cohort going to higher education from the present 10% to 15%.
Recently the five-year integrated courses launched in different disciplines in the IITs affiliated to the university in the State. But unfortunately the responses came from urban students in large number although the courses were purely meant for rural students. It is unusual, but very true.
When the rural women don’t fail to admit themselves in colleges for higher studies the urban students have an overwhelming advantage over their rural counterparts to get high grades. Kavita K. says ‘we really don’t get an opportunity to continue our studies after SSC. Pursuing Higher Education remains a dream for most rural girls’.
Thanks to the establishment of Indian Institutes for Information Technology (IIIT) at Basar in Adilabad and Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies in state the rural girl students are able to fulfill the dreams of Higher Education. It is reported that the girls 8 out of 52 mandals made it to IIITs compared to boys.
The tides are truly changing. The attitudes of parents have changed even in rural areas. Now, with changing sensibilities, parental attitudes have shifted significantly. Like before they don’t force girls to marry and discontinue studies. But encourage the girls to study hard and get into IIITs. The communities have matured with time.
This is witnessed due to the cooperation of government. The IIITs doesn’t put burden on parents. The loans are available which can be paid only after getting jobs. Yet, there is also an exemption of fee for those students whose family income is below Rs. 1 lakh. The parents are happy to get the children in IIITs without much investment.
A well known fact it is that rural women are particularly vulnerable to poverty. They play a critical role in the rural economies of both developed and developing countries. So, Higher Education makes a significant contribution to the strengthening of democracy and administration of society.
Nevertheless ness it is really important to arouse rural women and help them to see their own advantages, to seek for opportunities and to become the subjects of development by seeking Higher Education. It is a better means at reducing poverty and utilizes knowledge for betterment of society. We need to give special attention to this problem.
If somebody questions me, what is the best gift I received from my parents? I would probably say education. Yup! Because education is the biggest asset one can have. And for women it is more important. It is education what makes a women stand in society with the male counterparts.
I was fortunate to go to school and college. But unfortunately not all parents send their daughters to obtain education. Not all women are equal footing with men still today after so much of development.
It is a grim reality that living in urban, we don’t acknowledge the life of rustic women. What we people do is, give names to the rural women, ‘Anpad’, ‘Jahil’ and ‘Gavaar’. They are also identified as ‘hick’. It means a person rose in a rural area, an unsophisticated person. They are not intelligible persons, they are parochial and narrow-minded.
This is all observed due to a wide disparity in the literacy of urban and rural women. The historical image of ‘housewife’ silently rules the countryside. The literacy rate among rural women remained less though several efforts have been made on part of the government to deal with this subject.
Nearly 70 per cent of the population lived in rural areas and most rural women were illiterate and not at all aware of their rights. The reason could be the age-old negative typecast rural population thinking. The rate of illiteracy is high in rural areas due to their thinking patterns. In India, the literacy level is the highest compared to anywhere else in the world. The reason for the growth of literacy is because of the umpteen numbers of various types of Colleges and Universities offering different kinds of education in various fields. Reason that education is an instrument for the social advancement. And in particular if rural-women are educated the problems of like poverty, unemployment, child labor, female foeticide, and many more can be resolved to higher extent.
Every year the college door opens for a number of students. Our country has plenty of Colleges and Universities offering higher education opportunities. The enrollment of rural girls for higher education is not in large. More girls in rural areas discontinue education to either get marry or become support for families by earning daily wage at countryside. The Higher Education remains a daydream to many of them.
Like Sarla, a rural woman had to dropout from higher studies for marriage at the age of 17. She says, ‘If given a chance in future she would still like to continue studies and become a teacher’. Her father had a different opinion. He questions, ‘why should I send my daughter to college? She will be a housewife in the future I knew. Now I am happy that she is married at the right time. There is no need of Higher Education’.
It is not just the father of Sarla, many parents in rural areas think the same way. The degree college is regarded as waste-of-time by rural people. The years between eighteen-twenty one are most important time. These years get squandered in college they say. What is the need to send girls for Higher Education? The basic education already they have, stop now. Enough is enough!
But is it good to stop the girls from achieving knowledge which is for their good. Is college means not putting time to good use? Then why most women go for higher studies even in thirties and forties. What makes women crave for achieving degrees in vocation? What does college really does to a girl and his mind? It is important for them to understand what is good and what is better.
The Higher Education is good. The college is a place of education. We go to college to know, to understand how knowledge is helpful and powerful. It makes our mind. It prepares us as citizens of the world. It is the most important part of youth. The years of learning is often misconceived as the years of romance due to the love affairs and rising love in college. This could be one reason why parents don’t want to send their daughter for Higher Education.
However the gender factors restrict the women from higher education and job opportunities. It is a disheartening that the males think that if women continue to higher education, she will compete with them economically. Education makes women to question. If they are less educated, they won’t know the laws and they can easily suppress them. An educated female questions why this, why not those. The problem arises for men. So they deprive females from higher education.
Another strong consideration in girls’ unequal access to education in rural areas includes a lack of a safe means of transportation, poor security, and the lack of separate sanitation facilities. It is significant that already statistical investigation in this country and in England shows that the standard of health is higher among the women who hold college degrees than among any other equal number of the same age and class.
Sociological surveys indicate that those who desire for higher education but are unable to enter the institute as a full-time student can view part-time study as a matter of urgency. The other surveys have noted that those women who already have a reasonable general education are the group most likely to continue their studies part-time. After the age of 24 many rural women more likely than men continue studying
Over the past two decades the rural education for women has been very impressive. It cannot be denied that rural girls and young women are attracted with higher education as a good employment is brought through education. Indeed rural women, have a lot of spunk and enthusiasm to study.
Focus on Rural Women’s Higher Education
11th five-year plan lay more focus on higher education with reference to areas of rural areas, and backward classes and women folks. By the end of the plan there should be an increase in the percentage of each cohort going to higher education from the present 10% to 15%.
Recently the five-year integrated courses launched in different disciplines in the IITs affiliated to the university in the State. But unfortunately the responses came from urban students in large number although the courses were purely meant for rural students. It is unusual, but very true.
When the rural women don’t fail to admit themselves in colleges for higher studies the urban students have an overwhelming advantage over their rural counterparts to get high grades. Kavita K. says ‘we really don’t get an opportunity to continue our studies after SSC. Pursuing Higher Education remains a dream for most rural girls’.
Thanks to the establishment of Indian Institutes for Information Technology (IIIT) at Basar in Adilabad and Rajiv Gandhi University of Knowledge Technologies in state the rural girl students are able to fulfill the dreams of Higher Education. It is reported that the girls 8 out of 52 mandals made it to IIITs compared to boys.
The tides are truly changing. The attitudes of parents have changed even in rural areas. Now, with changing sensibilities, parental attitudes have shifted significantly. Like before they don’t force girls to marry and discontinue studies. But encourage the girls to study hard and get into IIITs. The communities have matured with time.
This is witnessed due to the cooperation of government. The IIITs doesn’t put burden on parents. The loans are available which can be paid only after getting jobs. Yet, there is also an exemption of fee for those students whose family income is below Rs. 1 lakh. The parents are happy to get the children in IIITs without much investment.
A well known fact it is that rural women are particularly vulnerable to poverty. They play a critical role in the rural economies of both developed and developing countries. So, Higher Education makes a significant contribution to the strengthening of democracy and administration of society.
Nevertheless ness it is really important to arouse rural women and help them to see their own advantages, to seek for opportunities and to become the subjects of development by seeking Higher Education. It is a better means at reducing poverty and utilizes knowledge for betterment of society. We need to give special attention to this problem.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Leveraging Human Power for Environmental Shock
These days, organizations are facing rapid, often unforeseen changes in their external environments. This transition that the organization experiences to cope with external disturbances is termed as "Environmental Shock". Environmental shocks resulting from major shifts in technology, economic forces, political regimes, or, in some cases, from natural disasters, can create substantial uncertainty in an organization. Environmental shocks can create conditions of uncertainty and affect mind-sets and strategies of the organization. As the speed of change in external environment continues to increase, leveraging skills and talents of the employee is the fundamental competency needed by managers, supervisors, human resources staff, and organization leaders. To leverage human capital, it is of utmost importance to make people and organization, as a whole, accept the "environmental shock'. Employee acceptance of environmental shock is increased by organizational commitment, a harmonious industrial relations (IR) climate, education, job motivation, job satisfaction, job security and positive affectivity.
Need to Understand People
A study found that -
(a) employee's psychological capital (a core factor consisting of hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience) was related to their positive emotions that in turn were related to their attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors (organizational citizenship and deviance) relevant to organizational change;
(b) mindfulness (i.e., heightened awareness) interacted with psychological capital in predicting positive emotions; and
(c) positive emotions generally mediated the relationship between psychological capital and attitudes and behaviors.
Whether the environmental shock takes the form of a merger, acquisition, outsourcing, downsizing, streamlining or restructuring, an organization cannot successfully achieve its business and financial objectives until a critical mass of employees have completed their individual transitions.
All changing organizations struggle with people related issues. Most attention is usually given to the organization in terms of structure, processes, tools, measurements, policies and procedures, but for the transition to be successful, people need to "buy in" and be committed. Their individual interests, values and competencies must be effectively aligned with the organization's vision, culture and capabilities.
Transition within an organization typically becomes mis-aligned from the combination of two variables: - Different Function Realities: Senior managers often have access to information soon and, therefore, have a "jump" on moving through the transaction from the previous organizational state to a desired state. They also tend to be the drivers of the change and have more control than middle managers and other employees. Middle managers, although intellectually on board with senior management, need more time for their emotional transition than the senior executives expects.
Different Personal Responses to Change: Individuals may be scattered across on their personal responses to change. The result is a mis-alignment of emotions, understanding, effort and commitment, that impacts negatively on the performances of the individuals and the organization as a whole.
Effects of Environmental Shock
Environmental shock introduces some change and change brings resistance in the organization. Resistance is an inevitable response to any major change. Employees aren't really resisting the change, but rather they may be resisting the loss of status, loss of pay, or loss of comfort. A psychological dynamic called a "Competing Commitment" is the real reason for employee resistance to organizational change. The change is not challenged, but rather it is resisted, or not implemented at all because the employee faces additional issues and concerns related to the change.
Any social, economic, or environmental shock hits harder those people who are already vulnerable and have fewer resources to cushion themselves with against the consequences, ex ante, or to cope with the consequences ex post. Because the ability of an organization to align its strategy with the demands of its external environment is critical to continue viability, significant environment changes should result in a realignment of organizational strategies to fit the new environmental conditions. At the same time, radical environmental shift may also create opportunities for organizations to move in new strategic directions. There has to be an organization-wide learning culture that touches and connects all employees. Such culture has a unique ability to create cultural traits important to high performance, or to change traits that are impeding success. This way organization is ready for any sort of environmental shock.
Leadership Strategies for Leveraging Human Power
The role of human capital in today's organization has been going into a revolutionary phase. As the workplace moves to a service and information economy, savvy organizations are increasingly becoming aware that sustaining talented human capital is very critical for their survival in this ever-changing business scenario.
The workforce is in a state of continuous evolution. The technological revolution, the influence of the media and the impact of globalization have resulted in dramatic social, political, and economic changes world-wide. New demographic patterns are taking shape in the workplace. For instance, the labor force is becoming more diverse than ever before, the percentage of college graduates seeking jobs is growing considerably, and also the growing role of women in the workplace. Preparing such a "Heterogeneous Mix" of people to be ready for an environmental shock cannot be tougher.
Leveraging the human capital for competitive advantage can be done by balancing: -
Professional and Technical Knowledge
Product and Process Knowledge
Effective Understanding of People
To leverage the strengths of human capital, successful leaders engage, empower and encourage employees. Leaders understand that people strive to achieve their best when the leader focuses the energies of the followers using three leadership activities: -
1. Reinforcing their key competitive behaviors (which operation behaviors prepare for the future, sustain team momentum, and keep you competitive).
2. Fully engaging them in the experience of change (how much and how meaningfully are your people engaged in or given ownership of organizational change).
3. Immersing everyone in a changed environment (in what ways are you making change inevitable through corporate policies, structures, processes and your expectations).
Developing Human Capital
Train and develop at all levels.
Encouraging wide-spread involvement.
Transferring knowledge.
Monitor progress and track development.
Evaluate human capital -
* Employees must share knowledge and work together, collectively, to reach organization goals.
* Firms often use 360-degree evaluation and feedback systems.
* Managers' success cannot compromise the organization's core values.
Conclusion
The 21st century is being called the knowledge era. The commoditization of technology and technical job skills is ever-increasing. The high-valued assets of organizations often appear to be intangible. What is it that sets one organization apart from others that offer similar or the same service and product? It is the Human Capital assets the organization possesses. It is well understood that people are the prime resource today. So, it follows that we have the best chance of leveraging our investments if we build on this resource.
Many companies tend to think of business in absolute terms of assets and liabilities, profits and losses, revenue and expenses. However, the fact is that without employees there is no business. To make an organization environmental shock-proof, there is a need to make employees change-proof. Employees can accept a shock, when they have support. Edward Lawyer says that there are three major criteria, which, acting in concert, can create winning organizations, and they are human capital, organizational capabilities, and core capabilities and core competencies. All have a common thread in the sense that organizational capabilities, and core competencies, also, require the right kind of human capital, because they largely depend upon the skills and talents of individual employees in an organization.
Need to Understand People
A study found that -
(a) employee's psychological capital (a core factor consisting of hope, efficacy, optimism, and resilience) was related to their positive emotions that in turn were related to their attitudes (engagement and cynicism) and behaviors (organizational citizenship and deviance) relevant to organizational change;
(b) mindfulness (i.e., heightened awareness) interacted with psychological capital in predicting positive emotions; and
(c) positive emotions generally mediated the relationship between psychological capital and attitudes and behaviors.
Whether the environmental shock takes the form of a merger, acquisition, outsourcing, downsizing, streamlining or restructuring, an organization cannot successfully achieve its business and financial objectives until a critical mass of employees have completed their individual transitions.
All changing organizations struggle with people related issues. Most attention is usually given to the organization in terms of structure, processes, tools, measurements, policies and procedures, but for the transition to be successful, people need to "buy in" and be committed. Their individual interests, values and competencies must be effectively aligned with the organization's vision, culture and capabilities.
Transition within an organization typically becomes mis-aligned from the combination of two variables: - Different Function Realities: Senior managers often have access to information soon and, therefore, have a "jump" on moving through the transaction from the previous organizational state to a desired state. They also tend to be the drivers of the change and have more control than middle managers and other employees. Middle managers, although intellectually on board with senior management, need more time for their emotional transition than the senior executives expects.
Different Personal Responses to Change: Individuals may be scattered across on their personal responses to change. The result is a mis-alignment of emotions, understanding, effort and commitment, that impacts negatively on the performances of the individuals and the organization as a whole.
Effects of Environmental Shock
Environmental shock introduces some change and change brings resistance in the organization. Resistance is an inevitable response to any major change. Employees aren't really resisting the change, but rather they may be resisting the loss of status, loss of pay, or loss of comfort. A psychological dynamic called a "Competing Commitment" is the real reason for employee resistance to organizational change. The change is not challenged, but rather it is resisted, or not implemented at all because the employee faces additional issues and concerns related to the change.
Any social, economic, or environmental shock hits harder those people who are already vulnerable and have fewer resources to cushion themselves with against the consequences, ex ante, or to cope with the consequences ex post. Because the ability of an organization to align its strategy with the demands of its external environment is critical to continue viability, significant environment changes should result in a realignment of organizational strategies to fit the new environmental conditions. At the same time, radical environmental shift may also create opportunities for organizations to move in new strategic directions. There has to be an organization-wide learning culture that touches and connects all employees. Such culture has a unique ability to create cultural traits important to high performance, or to change traits that are impeding success. This way organization is ready for any sort of environmental shock.
Leadership Strategies for Leveraging Human Power
The role of human capital in today's organization has been going into a revolutionary phase. As the workplace moves to a service and information economy, savvy organizations are increasingly becoming aware that sustaining talented human capital is very critical for their survival in this ever-changing business scenario.
The workforce is in a state of continuous evolution. The technological revolution, the influence of the media and the impact of globalization have resulted in dramatic social, political, and economic changes world-wide. New demographic patterns are taking shape in the workplace. For instance, the labor force is becoming more diverse than ever before, the percentage of college graduates seeking jobs is growing considerably, and also the growing role of women in the workplace. Preparing such a "Heterogeneous Mix" of people to be ready for an environmental shock cannot be tougher.
Leveraging the human capital for competitive advantage can be done by balancing: -
Professional and Technical Knowledge
Product and Process Knowledge
Effective Understanding of People
To leverage the strengths of human capital, successful leaders engage, empower and encourage employees. Leaders understand that people strive to achieve their best when the leader focuses the energies of the followers using three leadership activities: -
1. Reinforcing their key competitive behaviors (which operation behaviors prepare for the future, sustain team momentum, and keep you competitive).
2. Fully engaging them in the experience of change (how much and how meaningfully are your people engaged in or given ownership of organizational change).
3. Immersing everyone in a changed environment (in what ways are you making change inevitable through corporate policies, structures, processes and your expectations).
Developing Human Capital
Train and develop at all levels.
Encouraging wide-spread involvement.
Transferring knowledge.
Monitor progress and track development.
Evaluate human capital -
* Employees must share knowledge and work together, collectively, to reach organization goals.
* Firms often use 360-degree evaluation and feedback systems.
* Managers' success cannot compromise the organization's core values.
Conclusion
The 21st century is being called the knowledge era. The commoditization of technology and technical job skills is ever-increasing. The high-valued assets of organizations often appear to be intangible. What is it that sets one organization apart from others that offer similar or the same service and product? It is the Human Capital assets the organization possesses. It is well understood that people are the prime resource today. So, it follows that we have the best chance of leveraging our investments if we build on this resource.
Many companies tend to think of business in absolute terms of assets and liabilities, profits and losses, revenue and expenses. However, the fact is that without employees there is no business. To make an organization environmental shock-proof, there is a need to make employees change-proof. Employees can accept a shock, when they have support. Edward Lawyer says that there are three major criteria, which, acting in concert, can create winning organizations, and they are human capital, organizational capabilities, and core capabilities and core competencies. All have a common thread in the sense that organizational capabilities, and core competencies, also, require the right kind of human capital, because they largely depend upon the skills and talents of individual employees in an organization.
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