Pedal-powered-generators-based MGNREGS will require minimal administrative paraphernalia, in comparison to capital construction projects. It could transform the villages into potential net exporters of energy, even without their being connected to the national grid — a game changer for the nation’s overall energy security
The MGNREGS is a radical measure, based on the concept of entitlement of the most vulnerable sections of the nation’s citizenry to (limited) fallback employment legislated by the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act of 2005. By placing some minimal purchasing power in the hands of the rural populace, it offers them a basic safety net of sorts and a modicum of livelihood security.
The long-term viability of this landmark step will depend, however, on the impact the MGNREGS is able to make on the productivity of the agrarian economy through broadening and beefing up of the quality of the durable asset base in the rural areas over time. Basic infrastructure works (roads, water conservation, flood protection, irrigation, drought proofing, soil improvement, etc) are being taken up to that end, albeit perhaps not in a very concerted manner.
Generation of a crucial “intermediate good” like energy is, however, not in the specified list of eight kinds of capital construction works permissible under the MGNREGS. This despite its all-round, and immediate, impact on the quality of life (and therefore also on “labour productivity” indirectly) through the extended waking, and working, hours it would enable. With almost a quarter of the country’s villages (and half of rural households) without electricity, this is an omission that merits re-consideration.
“Renewable energy parks”, based on the resource most suited to the endowment of each village —crop residues & human/animal excreta-based bio-gas, solar, micro & mini hydel, etc, — could be a useful addition to the MGNREGS repertoire. A promising possibility that deserves attention in this context is generation of electricity through mechanical means, by (an individual) pedaling a stationary bicycle (or by draught animals driving it in circular motion), as it can provide an immediate, if rudimentary, remedy of sorts for the rural electrification lag in remote areas and those too poorly endowed to permit local energy generation by other means.
Pedal powered generators (PPGs) advertised in the industrialised economies claim to deliver around 150-200 watts of power with an average female/male rider. (The yield is considerably lower, as yet, in case of the Indian manufactured ones, which are essentially pilot projects.) This translates into lighting 10-15 (11 watt) CFl bulbs. It means that a local grid providing basic lighting to 4-7 neighbourhood households (two CFl bulbs in each, connected in parallel, after allowing for some line losses) can be set up with one (stand alone) PPG and supplied with electricity on a real time basis (i.e. whenever the PPG is pedaled). There is no need for any other equipment, such as a battery, etc, (whose service life is critically dependant on proper maintenance, and therefore prone to stoppages in remote areas lacking in the requisite technically trained personnel). Of course, if a storage battery can be attached to the PPG, its versatility would naturally increase. It could then deliver power without need for real time pedaling but at a (substantial) increase in cost, as the battery is the more expensive part of the equipment. likewise, use of lEDs in place of CFls (with one fifth the power consumption) can improve and extend the reach of the local grid powered by a PPG, but again at a price.
labour (muscle) power and time — the only resource that the poor possess somewhat on par with the well endowed — are also the (only) inputs required to work the PPGs and produce electricity. Thus the PPG is a device particularly suited for programmes like the MGNREGS (and the JNNURM) targeting those at the lowest rungs of the resource endowment ladder. No “skills” are needed to run it. It is gender neutral — women can also work it without any kind of difficulty or awkwardness. Besides, it can be utilised 24/7, at convenience. This affords the immensely valuable facility of “flexi-timings” — beneficiaries can attend to sundry tasks (in the fields or animal sheds during the day or in between) and still come back to complete the quantum of “work” required of them for earning the day’s MGNREGS wages. It can, therefore, provide the ideal “off-farm employment” for the marginal farmer, absence of which is the bane of the agrarian scene.
Moreover, a PPG-based MGNREGS will require minimal administrative paraphernalia, in comparison to capital construction (or even other renewable energy generation) projects. And the obvious environment sustainability and overall economic advantage from such clean, and locally produced, energy on a nationwide scale requires no elaboration.
Furthermore, once hydrogen as the clean fuel of the future (on which R&D is at an advanced stage worldwide) becomes commercially viable, energy evacuation should be feasible (through production of hydrogen gas in the village, by electrolysis of water through PPGs). That could transform the villages into potential net exporters of energy, even without their being connected to the national grid — a game changer for the nation’s overall energy security (and for the rural-urban equation that has, historically, been tilted against the former everywhere in the world). The prospect of a “hydro-carbon free” rural energy scenario would, in itself, be a gain in compare.
Finally, the PPG can offer wider benefits, extending well beyond economic (energy and environmental) gains. Being an individual activity essentially, it would be easily replicable in the urban areas (in particular among the affluent), with considerable health benefits for those leading sedate lives — preventively lowering incidence of heart and other lifestyle ailments to larger societal advantage. At the same time, it would afford the “privilegentsia” a ready way of identifying with the underprivileged — through “shramdan” on the PPG. The latter is an important desideratum, in the ultimate analysis, for success of the “inclusive” growth approach — as was the raison’ d’etre of the charkha popularised at Gandhiji’s instance during the freedom movement.
A PPG tapped nationwide “shramdan” programme (covering all citizens fortunate to enjoy the convenience of hydro-carbons based energy) could provide the much needed missing link between “globalising India” and the rest of India (Bharat) — a “disconnect” that is increasingly acknowledged now as the core of the ethical dilemma of a non-redistributive development model.
There would, therefore, seem to be a strong case for setting up national Technology Missions on the PPG and on hydrogen energy fuel. An all-out R&D effort to make the technical efficiency of these two technologies cost-effective and comparable to the best globally is called for — as a publicly proclaimed priority goal for realisation within a time-bound framework, a la late President Kennedy’s 1962 pledge to put “man on the moon before the end of the decade”.
Apart from its several intrinsic advantages, the PPG can afford an opportunity — if the economics of bringing it under the MGNREGS can be made to work outright --- for some innovative experimentation on a wide range of fronts: technology, public service delivery and governance, literacy and broader socio-political policy.
A distinctive feature of the PPG (as far as devices and machines go) is that it leaves the mind completely free, during the pedalling operation, for gainful deployment. This affords an opportunity for some creative, out of the box, thinking for putting the mental energies of the captive audience pedaling the PPGs to good use. literacy, in case of the illiterate, and larger, lifelong, learning — liberation of the mind from prejudices (and other, more insidious, manifestations of “false consciousness”) — in case of the others, are the obvious possibilities that come to mind in this regard.
Here then is a first rate challenge for the State and society — to find captivating ways of capturing the attention of the PPG pedalers for promoting messages of modernity, appropriate to the setting and the moment, with subtlety and appeal, so as to whet the appetite for more. This can be an open ended and ongoing exercise in which there naturally can be no pre-set prescriptions — “let a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend”, in the colorful imagery of the Chinese language.
If suitable electronic counters and attendant devices could be incorporated in the design of the PPG so as to enable automatic recording of the amount of mechanical energy contributed by an individual (and its conversion into money value at Government approved rates) — as is common in exercise/fitness machines today — it would make the equipment more efficacious for the purpose of the MGNREGS. For, such modern features — if they can be built into the design of the equipment without detracting from its robustness (dust and heat tolerance) — could help in combating corruption and other leakages endemic to our delivery mechanisms.
Going further, the possibility of eliminating, or at least minimising, rent-seeking “middlemen” among functionaries involved in delivery of services to the poor should perhaps be a major consideration in favour of such dedicated Technology Missions aimed at development of IT-embedded equipment capable of automatic documentation, if not outright automation, of the key indicators of welfare programme delivery mechanisms and measurement parameters and processes.
Apart from electronically embellished PPGs as above, other possibilities in the same tack could be solar powered (and graphics operated and/or voice enabled) ATMs and bio-metric smart cards with inbuilt features for dedicated, near “real-time”, reporting of data and documentation to monitoring units in the District Headquarters & State capitals. (The latter could be monitored by civil society volunteers on a real time basis, with links in the media so as to be able to evoke a public outcry — and immediate remedial action — in case of any unsatisfactory aspects in implementation revealed by the data.)
And teaching illiterate villagers to manoeuvre the ATMs and smart cards (to encash their earnings credited into their UID smart cards) could form a challenging adjunct “core literacy” campaign conducted alongside, if not as part of, the MGNREGS. Bypassing the “three Rs” approach or other formal markers, the core literacy campaign could concentrate on confidence building (for successfully negotiating the ATM, and other similar, transactions as well as for asserting sociopolitical rights, as under the NREGA and generally). In so doing, it would hopefully trigger a quantum jump in the self-esteem of those who may otherwise have little or no experience, all through their lives, of any interface with a machine and almost none again, outside their families, of non-exploitative, non-hegemonic, human interaction. Imaginatively implemented (with reputed civil society organisations substituting official agencies on the front line), such a campaign — eminently in the spirit of the “Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan” — should in no time yield manifold benefits by way of a “phase transition” in the awareness and consciousness of the dispossessed (of their human dignity and potential and of their rights as empowered citizens of a caring, democratic, polity).
If this proves to be too expensive, it could be introduced in a phased manner — in selected backward areas and districts with a record of poor implementation first, where “leap-frogging” may be the only way, leaving the others to make do with linear progress.
“Inclusivity” and the “bottom billion” have been talked about — they are buzz words now — but a truly inclusive development strategy (as opposed to tokenism and sloganeering) has yet to see the light of day. Such a strategy will require, inter alia, “directing resources to the sectors in which the poor work (such as agriculture and informal activities), areas in which they live (relatively backward regions), factors of production which they possess (unskilled labour) and output which they consume (such as food)”.
With its heart in the right place, might the MGNREGS — reconceptualised as the centre piece of a new compact between the State and society according greater primacy, and urgency, to addressing the challenge of poverty than hitherto — serve as the core of such an “alternative” approach woven around the desideratum of catapulting the village into the modern age on the strength of technology and transparencyIJ
(The authors, currently with the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, have an interest in S&T and strategic affairs. (http://www.nias.res.in/aboutnias-people-faculty-ambassadorsaurabhkumar.php)
