The powerful village of Agunda

In the middle of all the news about the death and destruction in the Himalayas, I finally heard something that gave me hope. There I was, listening gloomily to the news that the numbers of missing have gone up to 5,360 and forecasts of further rains, when my phone rang. It was Yogeshwar Kumar, the Indian Institute of Technology alumnus, who's devoted his life to training villagers to build, operate and maintain their own micro hydel plants. In Uttarakhand, to assess how the villages where he'd worked had fared during the recent floods, he wanted to give me an update of the ground situation in Agunda, district Tehri. In 2008, the micro hydel power plant that he'd trained villagers to build and maintain, had become operational there. Since then, the village, in true Gandhian style, had been on the path to self-sufficiency. Not only did the villagers have light in their homes, they also had surplus electricity to run small machinery, flour mills and more.

"On 16-17 June, when the rains wreaked havoc in Tehri, the intake point of water from the stream to the 50-year-old irrigation channel that our power plant was working on, was severely damaged," said Kumar. The channel was breached in several places not just by the stream but also by the several new waterfalls that developed because of the intensity of rainfall. "The power supply shut down immediately, and I realised it was a matter of time before I lost contact with the village, when their cell phones batteries lost charge," he recounted. Kumar was worried that it could take them years to get funds from the beleaguered state government to repair the channel. "And if the power plant remained inactive even for the next six months, villagers would have no option but to migrate. Our years of work would have gone waste..." he said.

About 10 days ago, Kumar's phone rang. It was from a contact in Agunda. Apparently the villagers had somehow managed to temporarily restart the plant. An astounded Kumar reached the village soon after, and was greeted by an extraordinary sight.

In a region shrouded in darkness (the power grid had failed due to rains and there's been no electricity supply in the area for the last 20 days), Agunda was a beacon of light. The ingenious villagers had managed to repair some of the breaches in the channel using leftover pipes and tin sheets. Then they diverted water from a rain-fed waterfall into the channel to run their power plant. "It would have been so easy or them to give up hope of restarting the plant," said an impressed Kumar. "Instead, the villagers, some of whom had been trained to maintain the plant, applied their knowledge to find a solution!"

Kumar's sense is that when a community has a sense of ownership over its resources and infrastructure, it'll not only take pride in maintaining it, but also will be less likely to wait for free handouts. I tend to agree. Meanwhile, Agunda's woes are far from over. The waterfall they're currently using will dry once the rains cease. Their channel is so damaged that it will need to be rebuilt completely. "The villagers are now so used to generating their own power that they can't wait to have it up and running somehow or the other!" he said.

To repair a long stretch of channel privately will require more funds than the villagers can afford, I commented. Kumar replied: "Where will the money for the repair work come from? I don't know. But what I do know is that one way or the other, Agunda will manage. As long as its people believe that they've the power to improve their lives instead of waiting for help, the village will always have light..."