Solar engineers, Barefoot style

It was a dusty stone building, not unlike many that one sees in the desert. Outside, all was quiet in the heat of the day. From within, however, strains of a Colombian folk song redolent of the rain forest wafted through. I followed the music to the building. In a hall that looked like a classroom-cum-factory floor, I was greeted by the sight of five groups of women - black, white and all shades in between, sitting together in perfect harmony, assembling complicated-looking circuits. I was in Tilonia's Barefoot College, and this was my first glimpse of its 10th batch of solar engineers - all illiterate grandmothers from the poorest villages of Colombia, Nicaragua, Madagascar and Panama. They were learning how to assemble, maintain and operate solar lighting equipment; so that when they returned, they could bring light to their own communities.

I watched them at work - thinking if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it was possible. "It's actually not that hard," said Ghuman Singh, their short, bespectacled teacher who has been associated with Barefoot College since 1998. "People who've had formal education often don't understand that you don't need to have a degree to be an engineer or a scientist. These ladies are living proof that anyone can be given technical training!" He showed me around the room, dominated by a large blackboard. All the components used in the circuit were clearly colour-coded. "Our training modules are all practice-based. This, coupled with the fact that every component is colour-coded, ensures that we don't have to rely on language at all," he said. So whether the trainee is from Barmer or Burundi, Madagascar or Jharkhand - "the same teacher and training module works for all".

In keeping with the Barefoot approach that has no reverence for formal degrees, Singh, too, has studied only up to class-VII. Yet, today, he is one of the most competent teachers of solar technology in Tilonia. "It fills me with wonder that the little work we do in Tilonia improves the lives of poor people halfway across the world," he said. "We live like a big family here. Every time a batch arrives, it has people who have neither stepped out of their homes, nor interacted with other cultures. I reassure them as I'd do with my own younger siblings. And every time a batch leaves, it's like seeing my own sisters leave home! They also cry and cry..." I asked him what he taught them, and he said, "It's a two-way learning process. I teach them to assemble solar equipment, and they teach me their language, culture and more."

Singh and fellow trainers have helped train about 100 grandmothers from India and 80 grandmothers from some of the least developed countries of the world. The idea behind training older women is that unlike younger women, they are rooted in their communities and, therefore, can best extend the benefits of their training.

I said - only half in jest - what these unlettered ladies had learnt about complex solar assemblies in six months, was more than what I could hope to learn in six years. Laughingly, Singh said, "Come to me for six months and I'll turn you also into a Barefoot solar engineer!" As I left the workshop, I wondered how our formal systems of education have turned technology into this mysterious entity that only an elite few can understand. It had taken the ladies in Singh's workshop to show me that making usable technology doesn't necessarily need a degree in engineering - all it takes is the willingness to forge ahead barefoot, and a teacher to lead you there.