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Q&A: 'Bunker' Roy aims to rethink development, solar power

by Nilanjana Bhowmick | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Friday, 1 July 2011 12:26 GMT

Development and solar energy efforts conceived and implemented by the poor are an answer to climate change pressures, says the head of a pioneering college in Rajasthan

AMJER, India (AlertNet) – Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy’s Barefoot College, based in India’s Rajasthan state, has for more than 20 years been helping poor people light up their villages with solar energy.

Since 2005, the college has concentrated on training grandmothers as solar engineers. Its founder criticizes top-down approaches to development, pushing instead development conceived and implemented by the poor themselves.

Roy last year was listed as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. He says climate change is a huge problem and the people most affected have not been consulted on solutions.

AlertNet talked with him about climate issues, development and solar power in a recent visit.

You say climate change affects the world’s poorest most but they have little voice in how to deal with it?

The problem in our country is that everything is top down. No one has really consulted the people who will be affected the most.

We haven’t really established a forum where we can have an exchange of views. How do you know and why do you presume that the rural poor don’t have solutions to climate change?

The biggest problem today is that people who suffer worst from climate change haven’t been consulted. Addressing climate change is all about listening to people who already have a solution in mind.

Why did you decide to train grandmothers to install solar power systems?

 These solar grandmothers are important because not only are we empowering them through this course but we are also taking on climate change on a very basic level. You are making sure they don’t use wood, they don’t use kerosene, they don’t use candles, they don’t use torches and so on.

What’s wrong with the way ‘sustainable development’ is done now?

I have over 12,000 houses that have been solar electrified. We have saved over 100,000 litres of kerosene from polluting the atmosphere. This is all over the world and it has only cost me $2.5 million. That’s what Jeff Sachs spent on one Millennium Village in Africa. $160 million for 80 villages! If I had $160 million, I would solar electrify 800 villages.

(The answer is) low cost, community-based, down-to-earth solutions. Let poor people manage, control and own their own resources. You have to involve the communities in all decision-making processes.

Why are we subsidizing the rich instead of subsidizing the poor? When we talk about subsidizing the poor, the government says it is not a good model. We don’t need business models. We need partnership models.

How is the Barefoot College approach different from other similar approaches to expanding solar power use among the poor?

For one, all the parts are fabricated in India. India has such a large solar industry. And I have a choice of 10 or 12 companies from which we buy the solar panels, batteries.

We buy the panels and batteries but everything in between - the charge controllers, the wires, the inverters, everything - is fabricated by the women in the village.

If you should ask any solar engineer, he will tell you that it is technically impossible to make a charge controller in a village. And if I say that a grandmother, 55 years old, is doing it, that is mind boggling for the guy.

What needs to change?

We question the system of development that is going on today, which is centralized, top down, which increases dependency and is enormously expensive. Barefoot College has shown an alternative way of doing this, from below.

Capitalizing on the resources already in the villages, we can show that it is not only in energy that villages are producing results but in basic minimum needs like drinking water, health, education, employment generation. We are showing that you can generate employment in the rural areas, and make sure people don’t migrate.

We are showing traditional ways of collecting rainwater which have had an enormous impact on recharging dry open wells, dry hand pumps. And this is all traditional knowledge and skills. We are not doing anything new. We are only showing the solutions already available in the village.

What is sustainable development?

Sustainable development is nothing but how to live within our means without abusing or over-exploiting natural resources, using only as much as you need.

Sustainability is about how we depend on each other, how we use other people’s resources and develop ourselves as a community.

When the World Bank talks about sustainability, it’s a joke. Look how unsustainably people live and then they ask for the rural poor to be sustainable?

The rural poor are already living a sustainable life. They never waste food, they never waste water, they never waste any of all the resources that they have within their reach. We have so much to learn from them.

I don’t think we should allow the word (sustainable development) to be co-opted and given a different meaning.

What major challenges will climate change bring?

Drinking water and light are the two major challenges for me. If we talk about drinking water, I feel compelled to ask, ‘Why aren’t we collecting rainwater on a large scale?’

Look at the buildings that are being designed today. They are all badly designed by engineers and architects with paper qualifications. They don’t use common sense at all. We are allowing water to go waste.  

What do you say to critics who argue solar energy is not cost effective?

It is very cost effective. If you look at the present situation, people in so-called electrified villages are actually cutting off the electrical connections because they cannot afford it anymore.

They have to pay a lump amount every month regardless of whether the electricity stays or comes at all! If I don’t get electricity nine hours a day and yet I have to pay – why would I do that? Better to get back to kerosene when I need the light.

Solar is the only option here but of course there has to be a subsidy element and a partnership element. And a business model for very poor people - people who live on less than a dollar a day.

The only solution is to subsidize the hardware and to let the community look after the (rest). It is a very cost effective solution especially if you look at it for over a period of 20 years – the life of a solar panel is 25 years. Only the battery has to be changed every five years.

It’s a myth when people say solar is a costly option. It is not!

What does an effective solution look like?

It is the smaller solutions that work. Small is beautiful. Take a village, 100 houses, get them together, have a meeting, let them agree on how much they can pay, let them donate a building for a work shop, get them to get someone to be trained to do the repair and maintenance, do the fabrication and let them be. Simple. Within six months you will be able to solar electrify a village – a solution for 5-10 years.

Are climate funds being used properly to fund sustainable projects?

Today we don’t have a model that works. Look at the graveyard of projects supposedly working on sustainable lines but after the project is over and the World Bank has gone, it has collapsed!

There is no imagination, no faith in the community and no consultation at all.

I say, go small. Look for many models. Be open and don’t restrict yourself to just one model.

There are many different ways in which people are producing power. Let’s respect all of that and take all of into consideration. One standardized centralized approach is not going to work.

Delhi-based freelance journalist Nilanjana Bhowmick writes for a range of international news outlets, and is editor of Shetizenjournalist.com, a citizen journalism website for women.

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