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Women solar engineers lighting up lives in rural Rajasthan

With the opening of a new training center for making and repairing solar lanterns, the rural Rajasthani woman has donned the new mantle of a solar engineer, a job that hitherto belonged to men. Commonly referred to as the barefoot solar engineers, these women are trained by the Social Works Research Centre (SWRC), an NGO, to make and repair solar lanterns and maintain solar panels.
Solar energy is being used for electrifying buildings, run a television in the SWRC campus, and run a 2 hp pump that is used for drawing water from the campus well. Besides, a telephone exchange with 40 rural connections and 18 computers is run by solar energy. The village hospital and night school are also lighted with solar power. The solar electrification process is maintained by these barefoot engineers.
“For us generation of solar power is not an end by itself. It should also initiate a process of change and empowerment, of opportunities for income and employment and for the provision of community-led basic services, particularly education and health,” says Bhagwat Nandan Sewda, in charge of the training program. Sewda, who started his career as a barefoot solar engineer himself, says “the students are taught how to make a transformer, wire it up and test it with batteries. And after the training, an engineer makes two or three lanterns in a day.”
“I was earning only Rs 350-400 per month by working as an agricultural labor. Now this job fetches me about Rs 1,300 per month,” says Kamla Bai, a role-model barefoot engineer.
“I do not have to work in the field, not even in the kitchen,” says Gulabi, another barefoot engineer and the highest contributor in the family. Kamla has even inducted her mother and sister-in-law in the training program.
SWRC also encourages women from other states to come over to Tilonia for training. With a $1.2 million assistance from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), SWRC has launched similar solar energy projects in remote unelectrified areas in Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Assam and Sikkim.
Source: http://aurora.crest.org/resources/emlists/pvusers/archives/msg00734.html

Women power

Aunique concept of entrepreneurship has brought women to the forefront, enhancing livelihood opportunities and making villages self-sufficient.
“Bio-villages” in India have transformed rural communities into ecological entrepreneurs by integrating the best in traditional wisdom and practices with cutting-edge biotechnology. Women’s groups, village development councils and farmers collectively form a bio-village society to manage the community’s resources. Skills upgradation and technological empowerment then give the poor innovative income generating options.
The bio-village model is based on the basic principle of community-led and owned planning/implementation. People’s talents and skills, both individual and collective, are an important part of this process.
The first “bio-center” in India was inaugurated on April 10, 1999, at Pillayarkuppam village in Pondicherry district. It serves as a demonstration/training/information-cum-service unit for rural folk where different kinds of technology, new crop varieties, floriculture, aqua-culture and micro-enterprises such as mushroom production, etc, are tested, all with the active involvement of the villagers and particularly suited to women.
The bio-village society which manages the bio-center acts as a bridge between the rural poor, the government and other institutions. Shanmugham, a local farmer, said that the training he received at the bio-center helped him to build his capacity as well as that of several colleagues. Another farmer, Parthasarathi, said that his groundnut yield had more than doubled since his training in integrated pest management practices under the project. So the project is truly “pro-poor, pro-nature, pro-jobs and pro-women”.
Source: http://www.undp.org/rbap/INDIA1.htm

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