Geetanjali Krishna: The Genwali turnaround

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Once upon a time, there was a little village called Genwali tucked far away in the hills of Tehri Garhwal. It was in the middle of a reserved forest and so far from the main power grid line that its inhabitants thought that they'd forever live in darkness. Village women would dry long canes of bamboo, light one end and use them as very long candles. They'd collect wool from cattle higher up in the pastures, card it by hand and weave coarse garments for personal use. The men eked out just enough from their terraced fields to subsist on. Life there was so basic that no girls wanted to marry Genwali boys and come to live there.

Then their lives changed. Yogeshwar Kumar, an alumnus of IIT Delhi came to the village, and convinced the villagers to collectively generate their own electricity from a mountain stream nearby. Chattar Singh and Veer Singh, two young men of Genwali, got interested. So did the village elders. Yogeshwar designed the turbine and equipment, the villagers contributed their labour. They carried heavy materials and equipment over 15 km on foot. Eventually, their contribution accounted for 30 per cent of the total cost of the project, substantially reducing the quantum of external funding needed. A few months later, Veer Singh and Chattar Singh, both of whom had studied only up to class five, were trained to become "grassroots engineers". Not only did they help in setting up the power generation unit, they even learnt enough to fabricate some of the equipment. Meanwhile, the villagers decided amongst themselves what tariff to pay, and when they most needed to use electricity.

Ever since the plant was inaugurated in 2001, Veer and Chattar Singh have operated and maintained it successfully for a small stipend of Rs 500. "We all decided to run the plant from 5 pm to 10 am every day, unless there's a wedding or someone specially asks for more," says Veer Singh. Each family pays Rs 30 per month. "This is enough for us to maintain the plant, and whenever there are any big repairs to be carried out, everyone contributes extra," says he . In the last five years, Veer Singh has developed enough expertise to actually train other grassroots engineers in villages in Orissa, Jammu and Kashmir and the north-east.

"Such community projects are cheap [between Rs 60,000 and 80,000 per kilowatt], use a renewable source of energy and empower people in remote villages in more ways than one," says Yogeshwar. His grassroots engineers agree. "Between the main road and our village, there are six or seven villages, none of which have electricity. So our village is pretty well known in the area!" says Veer Singh proudly. Chattar Singh points out that since the village has been electrified, out of the 60-odd families living there, about 14 have bought televisions and almost every household has cassette players. "We also have two or three dish antennas, so now everyone knows what's happening in the rest of the world!" says he. Not surprisingly, Genwali bachelors are now more eligible than ever before "" for none of the neighbouring villages have such good facilities.

Now they want to develop ancillary industries near the power plant: "We could either set up a flour grinding plant, or a refrigeration unit for dairy produce," says Veer Singh. Another dream is to harness more power from the streams around their village and set up their own grid. "We could, then, supply power to neighbouring villages as well," says Veer Singh. Big plans for small men ... but then that's what power does to people, I guess.