arun shourie's article

8/8/2019 Arun Shourie's Article

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ENABLING IDEAS: PART-I

Science from the heart

Innovations are flowering all over the country: a standing frame for the disabled,a keyboard for the blind, naturally cool buildings

ARUN SHOURIE

No-cost solutions

Our son, Adit, is not able to stand or walk. He is not able to see verywell. He is able to speak but only word by familiar word, often justsyllable by syllable. He is not able to use his right arm. He is able to

use his left hand and arm quite well but he is not able to use them fordelicate tasks like holding a pencil or eating.

To eat, he can hold the spoon in his left hand, but he is liable to over-shoot,taking the spoon too far beyond his mouth. One solution is to have someonefeed him. The other is to give him a spoon that has been specially bent sothat when he takes it the distance he normally does, it goes into his mouth. Butwhen he tries to scoop some food with it say, rice he is liable to shovel therice off the plate. Solution? Serve the rice to him in a thali. The spoon will keeppushing the rice till the spoon comes to a halt at the wall of the thali. The forceof Adits hand as the spoon pushes against the wall of the thali, however, isliable to push the thali off the table. Solution? Make a cavity in the table, placethe thali in it.

To move a wheelchair forward or back, you have to move both wheelssimultaneously. But our Adit can use only his left arm and hand. So he can pullor push only the left wheel of his wheelchair. The result? The wheelchair willjust keep going round and round. Solution? Have an extra rim on the left wheel.Through the axel, connect it to the right wheel. When Adit grasps only one rim,the wheelchair turns. When he grasps both, it moves forward or back.

But it is no good for Adit to be in a wheelchair all day long. His legs are thin andfeeble in any case. They would atrophy if he did not have at least someexercise, if they were not made to bear weight at least for some duration duringthe day. At the Centre for Special Education, the world-class school in Delhi ofthe Spastics Society of Northern India the Society is now known as AADI,Action for Ability Development and Inclusion they devised a standing-frame.It is a sort of box with a table in front. Adits legs are tied into gaiters. He is liftedin from the rear of the frame. And the rear wall is slid into position. He stands,listens to tapes of his favourite songs, newspapers are read to him for an hour.By a simple device the legs of a child who cannot stand receive good exercise.

Adit has difficulty holding a pencil. At the school the teachers inserted the pencilin a clay sort of material, had him hold it till it took the shape of his grasp. Thematerial was left to solidify. From then on, the pencil was easy for him to hold.Children like him cant grasp pieces of normal jigsaw puzzles. The teachersput knobs on each piece.

Some of the children can paint. Their paintings take ones breath away: thelines are so novel and bold, the colours so unexpected and vivid. In the earlyyears the Society requested some of the countrys leading artists to permitgreeting cards to be made from their paintings. Cards made from the paintingsof the children outsold those from paintings of the artists by such a margin that

the Society did not have to bother the latter for permission to use theirpaintings.
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But some of the children cannot paint. So, in the way they had put knobs andthereby enabled children to do jigsaw puzzles, the teachers taught children tohold blocks of the kind that are used to print our textiles; to press them on anink-pad like pad; and to then press the blocks onto a sheet of paper. But thechildren would have difficulty in bringing their hand down in such a way that thefigures would be well aligned. Solution? The teachers made a grid with ordinary

string. The child could thus bring his hand down in the next space. But when thesheet was done, the child would have difficulty in moving it away, picking up thenext one and placing it straight so as to begin printing again. Solution? Ateacher put the paper on a roller attached to the side of the table. When thechild was done with one length, he would move the roller and the next lengthwould be in front of him.

Many handicapped persons, as well as some of us normal fellows as we age,find it increasingly difficult to take buttons through the slits in our shirts.Solution? Use Velcro instead of buttons. Adit is not able to sit on his own. Hecannot therefore use a normal toilet. Solution? A wheelchair with a cavity thatslides over the normal pot. But parents in villages are unable to acquire chairsof this sort. Solution? One of the parents devised it. Everyone in the village

knows how to make a chulha. The parent used that design and technique tomake a potty chair, and place a large leaf or used newspaper under it so thatthe faeces could be easily removed. There are scores of other devices thatteachers of the Centre have made devices that require next to no outlay butwhich change lives.

Science from the heart

Innovations are flowering all over the country: a standing frame for the disabled,a keyboard for the blind, naturally cool buildings

Page 2 of 3

An ovation

The other day we had IT ministers and officials from 31 Asian countries inHyderabad for a summit on Information Technology. The high point one thatmoved the ministers to the depths of their hearts was a demonstration byfour children. They were from the Government School for Blind Girls inHyderabad. WEBEL has redesigned the standard keyboard so that little Salmawith her lovely, tiny hands typed away using just nine keys. At the touch of akey, the typed text was printed in ordinary type every normal person couldread it. At the touch of another key, it was printed in Braille the blind could

read that. But Braille books are very bulky. So a reading device has beendeveloped that scans a page a line at a time. The text is automaticallytransformed into Braille. Little pins rise and fall through a slit in the device toform the line that has been scanned. The child would move her finger over thatslit, read the line, press a button and the scanner would move to the next line.

Newspapers are now available on the Internet. C-DAC has developed softwareby which, with just a click or two, the child can go to her favourite newspaperthere, and the computer reads it out to her. And it reads out the text not word byhalting, disjointed word. It reads the text as continuous sentences withappropriate pauses for commas, full-stops etc. The ministers gave the children,and the staff of WEBEL and C-DAC an ovation.

In what way can I help you? I asked the principal of the school. Hisspontaneous response had nothing to do with himself. Sir, I look after 300blind girls, he said. But we are in quarters. What we need is a new building.


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Mr Chandrababu Naidu promised the new building there and then, so powerfulhad been the effect that the children had made on everyone.

Buildings

But the building can be the ordinary kind one that you and I would find appropriate. Or it

can be of the kind that was designed by my friend, the architect and writer, Gautam Bhatia.He was tasked to design the building for a school for blind children. The school was in threeblocks with courtyards in each block. How could one enable a child to know the block in whichhe was at any moment? How could one guide him through the corridor from one block to theother? Gautam first used the railing along the walls: in one block he made it triangular; in thenext he made it square; and in the third, circular. The child would just have to touch therailing, and he would know where he was. Next, he made the floor in each part of the corridordifferent. The child would just have to tap it with his stick, and he would know where he was.And in the three courtyards, Gautam put flowers and shrubs of different fragrances.

That sort of thoughtfulness can mark every structure we build. Members of the Rajya Sabhaare given Rs 12 crores for financing development projects. I gave the entire amount to the IITat Kanpur to enable them to set up a new school for bio-engineering and life-sciences. A

world-class institution has been set up. Doctoral and Masters programmes commenced two-three years ago. The undergraduate programme begins this July. The school is housed in aworld-class building that has a built-up area of 64,000 square feet. I had wanted that visitingthe building itself should be an education. Therefore, I had requested the architects, the lateMr Kanvinde and his associates, to build in features that had struck me in the building ofTERI, The Energy Research Institute, outside Delhi.

TERI taught us that 4 metres below the surface of the earth, the temperature is alwaysaround 24 degrees. Therefore, a tunnel has been built at that depth, and fans have beeninstalled to pump air from the tunnel into the building. As a result, when in winter thetemperature outside is 4 degrees, the temperature even in areas that are not air-conditioned like the foyer and corridors is a comfortable 24 degrees. In the summer, when thetemperature outside is a scorching 45 degrees, the temperature inside is a cool 24 degrees.

Just a tunnel and two fans. On the roof, the architects have put white tiles from the onesthat broke during construction or that could be purchased as malba. This simple devicereflects back into the sky 85 per cent of the scorching sunlight. On the south side, they haveplanted deciduous trees mulberry, champa that will be full of leaves in summer to shieldthe building from sunlight, but will shed them in winter to let in sunlight. Solar panels havebeen installed, cavities have been built into the walls, and the roof has been filled withinsulation material and you dont need expensive material for that, just hollow, invertedearthen pots will do. You could have a white removable cover that is stretched across the roofduring the day, and rolled aside during the night.

A dozen innovative features of this kind have together ensured that, while in the normalcourse a building of this size would have required 225 tonnes of air-conditioning load, the newbio-engineering building requires only 140 tonnes a saving of scarce power of nearly 30

per cent. In perpetuity. In a freezing place like Leh, the opposite is done. TERI and othershave built structures with what are called Trombe walls named after Felix Trombe, aFrench designer. On the southern side, first there is glazing; next a gap for air; then a thickmasonry wall painted black. There are vents at the top of the wall and the bottom. The airthat is heated between the glazed surface and the wall rises and goes through the gap at thetop into the rooms; the cool air from the rooms comes in from the gap at the bottom and getsheated in the space between the glazing and the black wall. Citing relevant literature, a TERIpublication reports, In buildings with thermal storage walls, indoor temperature can bemaintained at about 15 degrees centigrade when the outside temperature is as low as minus11 degrees centigrade... (TERI, Energy-efficient buildings in India, Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources, New Delhi, 2001. Edited by Mili Majumdar, the publication isfull of luminous ideas.)

As water also stores heat, you can stack drums of water in the gap, paint them black andobtain the same effect. The walls and roof in the biosciences building at IIT, Kanpur havebeen designed to let in a lot of outdoor light wide, large windows; an atrium that lets in light


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for the lush greenery in it. Together with the care that has been devoted to choosing lightingfixtures, these features ensure that the draft on electricity has been minimized. As the IIT is ahigh-tech place, sensors turn off the lights as sunlight lights up the room to givenspecifications there are different sensors for different rows of lights; the ones near thewindows get switched off first. The sensors turn off the remaining lights when all occupantshave left the room. You can accomplish the same result by ensuring that the last person who

leaves a room invariably turns off he lights. There is another Thai idea that I like even better.At a fixed time, say 8.30 pm, all TV channels play a particular tune. That is a signal to everyviewer to look around his house, and turn off lights that are on unnecessarily. What anelegant solution, and everyone gets to participate in alleviating a national problem.

Laurie Bakers buildings are full of such gems. I still remember a simple illustration that I sawin a report he did for the Government of Kerala decades ago. How should one reduce thetemperature in a hut? Do not use whitewash inside the hut. Instead, use it outside, specificallyon the thatched roof. Let the longer part of the hut be perpendicular to the direction of thesea-breeze. At the bottom of that side, do not have a solid wall, just trellis. Have trellis on theopposite wall too but at the top. The sea-breeze will enter the hut via the former. Hot air willexit through the latter. Contrast this simple idea with the boxes that we make these days even the old roshandan has been walled off, no wonder the rooms in so many government

quarters are ovens.ENABLING IDEAS PART-II

Unknown creators of human civilisation

Apart from the idea, the thing that lifts ones spirit is that each device hassprung from a person of no means, often of little education

ARUN SHOURIE

Sparklers everywhere, if only we would look

There is a good test, I often feel a country should be known bythe cleanliness of its public toilets. But I have never been able tofigure out what we can do about the condition of these in our cities.

And therefore I was struck by what the late Mr S L Kirloskar once told me. Wewere at a friends house for lunch. He was dressed as always elegantly, withhis bow tie. You Punjabis are so hard-working, he said. But why is it that youhave not yet produced a really large industrial house? I offered one conjectureafter another, only to have them shown up.

The conversation drifted. What is the most profitable investment I havemade? he asked. He explained. He had gone to drop a grandson to school. Hehad to use the toilet. The bathroom was as they usually are dirty and

reeking. He instituted an award. Unknown, unannounced, persons would visitschools in the Pune area over the year. The principal of the school that had thecleanest toilets would get an award of Rs 25,000. The award made such adifference. His family continues it to this day.

Pune also has one of the best examples of that sort of cleaning up that I havecome across, though on an even larger scale. There was a ganda nallah behindAcharya Rajneeshs ashram at the Koregaon colony. Several streams ofstinking, polluted, black muck poured into it. The stench was unbearable. AfterAcharya Rajneesh passed away, his followers after the usual tussle gotpermission to convert that nallah into a public park, a Japanese garden. Theyplanted weeds and roots of various kinds. These and a few pumps today work amiracle on the water. At the point where the garden begins, the water is as

terrible as it was. A hundred yards downstream, it is transparent, fish swim in it.The whole stretch a kilometer and more is today one of the best public
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gardens in India. Roots and weeds can be used in this way to recycle water from kitchens etc. to be used again for gardens, for toilets.

Eighty per cent of ailments in countries like ours are said to be gastrointestinal.And 80 per cent of these are said to spring from contaminated water. A basin tohold water, painted black at the bottom. A glass plate attached to it at a gentle

angle at 25-30 degrees; the two sealed together; a tube to collect the water;a basin to receive it. The water boils in the solar boiler; it condenses on theglass plate; it drains into the pipe; the pipe conveys it into a vessel. The water isfree of most of the impurities.

Water and health

On the Internet you will find half a dozen improvements on this simple device.Look up AquaCone. It is a transparent plasticky-cone attached to aninflatable-insulating floor. The cone terminates in a water collection pocket.The inflatable floor has an evaporative wick attached to its top surface,reports the website. The device can be put on any body of water. Drops ofwater adhere to the wicks fine fibers creating a large surface area for

evaporation, we learn. This causes the air inside the cone to becomesaturated with water vapour. Moist, heated air travels upward until it contactsthe surface of the cone. Pure, uncontaminated water droplets roll down into acollection pocket around the rim of the AquaCone... (As an example look up,http://www.solarsolutions.info/ educational/ education alright.html from whichthis illustration is taken.) The water that comes out of the factory is typically hot.But many an industrial process requires cool water. Chilling plants are oneanswer. But Dr Homi Bhabha directed that at the atomic power plant they makea fountain of the water as it comes out of the plant the air will cool thedroplets. Even if you have to cool it further and have therefore to have thechilling plant in any case, as you would be sending cooled-down water from thefountain into it, you will be saving a great deal on energy.

Drudgery

Remember how the bullock cart used to be till just a few years ago? Theexcruciatingly heavy wooden wheels; the thick, heavy wooden yoke that layatop the poor animals neck and shoulders. The bullock straining; his neckand shoulders, bruised, often bleeding. I still remember the evangelical zealwith which Dr N.S. Ramaswamy, then Director, IIM, Bangalore, set about toimprove the design. He replaced the wooden wheels with used rubber tyres; hebuilt ball bearings into the wheels; he redesigned the yoke to cushion thecontact with the animals neck and shoulders.

You would have seen the rickshaw puller sweat and strain in the noonday sun.Ever so often, he has to apply brakes. All the labour that the poor man has put

in up to that point to build up momentum is lost. IIT, Kanpur has devised a bankof coiled springs and wheels that are fitted into the rickshaw. These arestretched as the brakes are applied. A ratchet is activated at the end of thebraking operation, the professors explain, and it ensures that the energyremains stored in the springs as long as the brakes are applied. As the brakesare released, the springs unwind gradually and the stored energy flows backinto the driving wheel through a clutch. The rickshaw starts moving with little orno effort by the driver. The professors calculate that sixty per cent of the kineticenergy is retrieved because of the innovation.

When I request him for examples of such sparkling ideas, Dr R A Mashelkarsends two volumes published by the National Innovation Foundation, IndiaInnovates. These contain scores and scores of examples that arrest, amuse,

inspire. Remya Jose is a student of the 12th class in Palakkad, Kerala. She hasto spend two hours each way and change three buses going to and returningfrom school. Her mother fell sick. Her father had been suffering from cancer. In


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addition to all that she already had to do, she now had to wash the clothes ofher sisters. She designed a washing-cum-exercising machine. It is a box with arotating strainer drum and two pedals. The drum rotates as you exercise bymoving the pedals just the way you would on a bicycle. The cost? A mere Rs1,500!

Millions of women draw water from wells. The bucket is tied to a rope that, inturn, goes over a pulley into the well. When they pause for breath, when theirgrip loosens for a moment, the bucket falls back into the well, along with all theirlabour. At times the backlash of the hurtling rope causes injury. AmrutbhaiAgrawat of Gujarat put a lever-based stopper on the pulley. It lifts as the rope ispulled, but it presses against the rope and holds the latter in place when therope is released. The device is detachable. The 3 models in which it can beobtained cost all of Rs 150, Rs 250 and Rs 450 respectively!

You would have seen visuals of farmers using sprayers. The sprayer is carriedas a knapsack on the back. With one hand the farmer pumps air into the pump,with the other he sprays. Santokh Singh Kharve from West Bengal, and ParabatVaghani and Arvindbhai from Gujarat working independently have developed a

new design. They have devised a foot pedal. The sandals are connected to thesprayer through tubes. The device pumps air into the sprayers tank as youwalk. Both your hands are now free to spray efficiency is thus doubled, andthe energy consumption is slashed.

Several persons, the National Innovation Foundation reports, have developedcycle-based pumps to lift water in minor irrigation works, in cities to upperfloors. Kanak Das from Assam has developed a variant of the IIT device forimproving the standard rickshaw. Because of the uneven surface, the bumpsand depressions in our roads, the cycle slows down. Das has attached a batteryof six springs beneath the pedals. It converts the vertical energy generated bythe bumps into horizontal energy to propel the rear wheel. Thus, every time therider jumps in his seat because of the bumps in the road, the cycle runs faster!

In drought prone areas, the first casualty when rains fail are the animals. Therejust isnt enough water and fodder to keep them alive. Apart from the immensesuffering this causes, agricultural operations too suffer as the farmersdepend on animals for draught power. Mansukhbhai Jagani of Saurashtra hasdevised a replacement for the bullocks. He converted his Enfield motorcycleinto a diesel driven one. Next, he replaced the rear wheel by an attachment thathas tools for ploughing, sowing, inter-culturing etc. all the operations that aretraditionally carried out with the help of bullocks. The device takes just half-an-hour to cultivate an acre, and uses only 2 litres of diesel.

All of us who have become dependent on laptops are suddenly helpless whenwe get to a place with long power-breakdowns. Central Electronics Ltd. has

developed a portable solar panel to power the laptop. I can testify to how veryuseful it is. N V Satyanarayana of Vishakhapattnam has gone one better. Hehas developed a micro-windmill of just 3.5x3 cm, with a blade of 10 cmdiameter. It uses the merest breeze you get much more than his deviceneeds when you are in a train or bus to charge batteries of your laptop,cellphone, walkman, palmtop.

Rajesh Ranjan has attached a dynamo and a gear to the sole of shoes. As youwalk, the rotor of the dynamo rotates, electricity is generated, and rechargeablebatteries are charged!

The National Innovation Foundations volumes set out scores of such sparklingideas, one after another from a chance meeting with a Pilipino farmer, a

farmer in Karnataka develops a new variety of paddy that comes to yield 9000kg per hectare and becomes the rage in the region; another develops a varietyof nutmeg that yields larger fruit; a third develops a latex-free jackfruit; several


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farmers working independently in different parts of the country develop herbalpesticides; others develop herbal remedies for livestock; we encounter an entirecommunity that uses herbal extracts for preventive health care.

A 3-wheel tractor, a cotton stripping machine, a palm and coconut leaf matweaving machine, a mobile defibring machine, a pump to inflate the tyres of an

auto that uses the kick start mechanism of the vehicle, a simple device to breakthe coconut and collect its water. Apart from the idea, the thing that lifts onesspirit is that each device, each innovative product has sprung from a person ofno means, often of little education.

The writer is Union Minister for Disinvestment, Communications andInformation Technology

ENABLING IDEAS PART-III

Vitamins from scum, income from filth

Waste is being recycled in innovative ways. Prisoners, housewives, farmers areall part of this revolution

ARUN SHOURIE

A shelf-full of hope

I request Sunita Narain, director of The Centre for Science andEnvironment, for examples of persons who have made a differenceat next to no cost. From the recent issues of the Centres magazine,

Down to Earth, she sends me a shelf-full of hope. From Latur in Maharashtra toSanganer in Rajasthan to Kalpi in UP to Auroville in Pondicherry, women areusing agro-waste and rags to make exquisite art-paper for high-income users,filter paper for pharmaceutical companies. The product and process benefit theenvironment in many ways: what would have been littering the area is used up;one can start with an investment of just Rs 25,000 instead of the Rs 25 lakhsrequired for a normal paper mill; the paper is not bleached; the process islabour intensive; it requires almost no skills and so destitute, disabledwomen make a good living.

The Hindustan Aeronautics uses its 3 tonnes of daily canteen waste to produce230 cylinders of biogas per year. It harvests rain water thus saving 3,600,000litres of water every year. It uses solar energy to heat water and for lighting.One division has cut its paper consumption by fifty per cent by a simple device:it has switched from the 132 column paper to the A4 size.

From Gangtok in Sikkim to the Dal Lake to the Chitaranjan Locomotive Worksto Pitthoragarh and other places in Uttaranchal small bands have transformedthe environment by persuading shopkeepers, consumers, wholesalers to shunplastic bags, to either opt for paper bags or just bring their own jute bag whenthey come shopping.

In Mumbai, in Pune, in Chennai individuals, groups of housewives have broughtcheer to their lives, they have relieved municipalities of work the latter were inany case not doing. They have accomplished this by transforming their kitchengarbage into roof gardens. They separate bio-degradable waste from the non-degradable kind. They put the former into composting pits in the localities, or inearthen pots on their own roofs. They introduce earthworm culture into thewaste. The earthworms transform the waste into manure: much sooner than

would be the case otherwise at the end of a week, says the report fromChennai. Compost for flowers, for vegetables, for shrubs in the pots. On the
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roofs of evangelist-pioneers, S A Dabholkar in Kolhapur and R T Doshi inMumbai I myself saw twenty-foot high trees, sugarcane, wheat, vegetables,grapes, guava and other fruit, and much else. All from recycled waste.

The AMM Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre lifts families by spurring themto farm a slimy algae, Spirulina. Apart from Vitamin A, minerals, essential amino

acids, Down to Earth reports, this scum contains 60 per cent protein asagainst the 20-40 per cent we find in pulses. The Centre for Biofertilizers inMadurai sells powdered algae for use in combination with inorganic fertilizers.Others in the area distribute vermiculture as a complete substitute for inorganicfertilizers. Farmers report that their yields are higher by a fifth by using these.

A farmer in Sorhanese village, Bangalore district, sets a trend by using acompound of cattle urine and neem steeped in a pit as a pesticide. He usescoconut leaves, husk and weeds as mulch to be put around coconut palms. Heplants five curry plants around each coconut tree, and raises coffee plants inrows between those trees. Two school teachers take 8 hectares of degradedwasteland in Agali village, Palakkad district, Kerala, and heal it back intocultivable condition through mulching, water conservation and silviculture,

without any ploughing, fertilizers or pesticides.

In Pondicherry and again near Mysore, farms are rid completely of inorganicfertilizers and pesticides with a mash of leaves, cattle dung and a carefullychosen mix of crops; in the Mysore case, the couple establish that half a litreof garlic juice mixed with 4 litres of water on a 0.2 hectare plot is enough toprotect cabbage, that a decoction of vica, an ornamental plant, is also aneffective pesticide, while spraying dried cowdung soaked in water for a day onvegetable crops enhances productivity.

The headmaster of a primary school utilizes research done at the Centre forApplication of Science and Technology to Rural Areas to build an improvedstove to make jaggery, and enables villagers to cut the use of fuelwood by as

much as a quarter, apart from ensuring that the jaggery does not acquire thatburnt taste, and also preventing harm to their eyes for the stove emits nosmoke. A post-graduate capitalizes on the peoples preference for organic food,and has his produce certified as organic by the Institute of Marketing in distantSwitzerland.

Three accounts in particular in Down to Earth lifted my spirits for the day.Implicated in a murder case, a retired colonel, V S Yadav was in Tihar jail for 3months. His pasion is to change the way we treat garbage. He has organizedresidents associations for this purpose in Delhi. He put his stay in the jail toexemplary use. Tihar had 3,000 inmates. Between them they generated 45,000kg of garbage every week. The jail was filthy the Down to Earth writerdescribed it as despicable. Garbage was collected twice a week by the

municipal truck inefficiently at that, with a good portion of it getting droppedon the way out. Yadav got fellow prisoners to separate bio-degradable fromnon-degradable waste. He persuaded the jail authorities to allow him and hisfellow-prisoners to dig five large pits within the compound. The non-degradablewaste was sold systematically to kabariwalas. The bio-degradable portion wasput into the pits. Once the pit was filled, it was covered with a thin layer of soil.The particular jail one of five in Tihar was transformed. And in the bargain,prisoners earned the extra bit. When Down to Earth reported, the programmewas already yielding Rs 11,000 a month after deducting Rs 300 per head forthe eleven prisoners who had been engaged in collecting and segregating thewaste. The income would soon shoot up as the compost matured and could bemarketed. A goodly portion of the income was being contributed to thePrisoners Welfare Fund through it, families of prisoners that were not able to

support themselves because the main breadwinner was in the jail, were beinghelped. Part of the compost was being earmarked for a tree plantation scheme


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that the jail had taken up the jail is spread over 161 hectares. What anexample!

The next story was about Darshan Singh Tabiba, an innovative farmer fromHiatpur village of Ludhiana District in Punjab. His farm is unique, the Down toEarth correspondent wrote. It is a place where nothing goes waste, not even

animal excreta. Waste from one activity is put to use in another. The poultrywaste is used as pig feed. The pig excreta and dairy waste are drained into athree-hectare pond as an addition to the fish feed. The pigsty is built near theponds edge so that urine, which has nitrogenous compounds such asammonia, automatically flows into the pond. And the pond water is used forirrigation. Thanks to the nitrogen enriched pond water, I use about 25 per centless urea compared to other farmers harvesting the same yield, says a proudTabiba.

Tabiba is also using the waste from the nearby sugarcane industry, reports thecorrespondent. He uses pressmud, a byproduct rich in protein that is availablefree and for the asking, to feed fish, pigs and cattle. Against the nationalfreshwater fish annual yield of 5-6 tonnes per hectare, the correspondent

reports, Tabiba gets thirteen tonnes per hectare per year.

On a much larger scale was the report about the Anna University in Chennaiand the mission of its Vice Chancellor, A Kalanidhi. The entire campus is beingtransformed access of vehicles restricted; water-harvesting; recycling waterfrom hostels, kitchens, laboratories; sewage treatment plant; vegetables beinggrown organically in what were barren, empty spaces; trees being planted inlarge numbers; sale of cigarettes and tobacco banned; the use of plastic bagsbanned; composting pits...

Groups upon groups have commenced efforts to harvest water. And many haveimprovised innovations even as they have built the check-dams and ancillarystructures. The earthen structures to dam the water are usually built as a

straight wall is built. The National Innovation Foundations second Award wentto Bhanjibhai Mathukia, a 70 year old innovator who has been tinkering withmachines from his childhood. Just as arches enable a builder to save on lintelsand cement, Bhanjibhai built a check dam with a series of semi-circular bunds.The entire structure was completed for just Rs 10,000 including the cost oflabour. No help was sought or received from any governmental agency. Anentire village was transformed. But when the reservoir fills, rain water flows overand is lost. In Kutch the villagers improvise a solution: a trench is dug in theriverbed till it touches the impervious rock layer, Down to Earth reports. On thedownstream side of the trench a plastic sheet is draped to trap the water, andlead it to the aquifer. The trench is filled.

Why dont we notice such things, things that are happening all around us? Why

cant we multiply the successes across the country?ENABLING IDEAS: PART-IV

Praise, praise all our countrymen and women

We are too quick to find fault. Yet millions across India are improving the earth,conserving precious water

ARUN SHOURIE
http://www.indianexpress.com/about/feedback.html?url=http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42275&title=Praise,%20praise%20all%20our%20countrymen%20and%20womenhttp://www.indianexpress.com/about/feedback.html?url=http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_id=42275&title=Praise,%20praise%20all%20our%20countrymen%20and%20women


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Wherever we look, we will find a soution

True, wherever we look, we can spot a problem. But it is just as true wherever we look, we will find a solution. And not just a solution inthe abstract. We will find someone who has put that solution into

effect. Ever so often the solution is lying in front of our eyes unused,

neglected.

Kochi receives a lot of rain. Yet there is acute water shortage in the city. Indeed,readers will be astonished to learn, as I was when I was in the area, that evenCherrapunji the place that, we used to be taught in our school-days, receivesthe maximum rainfall in the world is short of water for eight months in theyear!

But there is the simplest solution, it is right in front of our eyes. The largestwater-harvesting project in Kochi, Down to Earth reports, has been undertakenat the Maharajas College it will harvest over 3 lakh litres. The project usestwo tanks that were once upon a time used for a gas plant by the collegesChemistry Department but had for long been lying abandoned. As part of the

National Service Scheme, students cleaned the tanks, they strengthened thefloor. In Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, water is being harvested by rehabilitatingthe traditional hand-hewn caves, the khatris. In Jharbeda, a tribal village inSundergarh, Orissa, water has been harvested by rehabilitating the localghagra, a pond-like structure lying at the base of the slope of a hill the pondhas been revived, and a wide drain dug from the top of the hill to carry rainwater to this structure. In Chennai, a commendable programme has beeninitiated to revive temple tanks. In another excellent initiative, water which usedto flow out to the sea via storm-water drains is being channelled into the aquifer the drains have been repaired, muck and leaves etc. have been cleared out,the bottoms of the drains have been left unpaved, shallow trenches andpercolation pits have been dug along the way. The simplest steps, nothing thatrequires space-science, using areas, structures that were lying abandoned,

broken down in front of everyones eyes. And yet steps that spell the differencebetween an obstacle and an opportunity.

For such steps to become a habit with us, we need to internalise threeGandhian lessons:

Just as development is not just outlays, it certainly isnt just Governmentoutlays, a revolution is not one person doing one incredible thing but a millionpersons doing a million things differently.

Each one of us can be a part of that sort of revolution. I am reminded of thisevery day as I see my father, now 91, labouring away with just a ballpoint andpaper; as I travel and persons come up and direct me to convey their gratitude

to him, I realise how, with just that ballpoint and blank paper he has made adifference, and each of us can make a difference to the lives of thousands inthe farthest corners of the country.

Every little thing we do can be part of that revolution. I was staying at a Zentemple once in Kyoto. The lady of the house was quietly at work after dinner.She was cutting the edges of wrapping paper in which gifts had been brought tothe temple so that the paper could be gifted for use again. She told me thatused stamps are systematically collected and sent abroad to be sold tostamp collectors, the proceeds in turn being given to charity organisations.

One of the most conscientious of officers I have ever come across, NarottamTripathi retired as UPs Secretary, Forests. Since then he is now past 80

he has devoted himself to helping retired government servants, who are too oldor otherwise unable, and their families to collect their pension benefits, to


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access medical facilities.

Remember Gandhiji he had a programme for everyone. If someone couldface death, he had a programme for her. If one could not face death but coulddevote her life to constructive work, he had a programme. If one could give uphis career and go to jail, he had a programme. If one could not do that but spin

in the privacy of ones home, Gandhiji had a programme. If one could not doeven that much but could merely sing, Gandhiji had the Ramdhun, the eveningprayer through which one could attune to the national struggle for freedom. Norwas all this just formal association. Everything was linked to the great purposeas every little rivulet contributes to the mighty Brahmaputra.

Development is no different. There is a related fact. In sphere after sphere, inevery part of the country individuals and groups are doing work that is bothcreative as well as service. If only one-tenth of the effort that is spent to knittogether activists who are shouting against something were spent on knittingthose who are doing good work, would that not work a revolution? An evensimpler effort would help immensely. All too often we do not even notice thegood work that is being done right next to us, nor the person doing it. When we

do notice her or him, all too often we just watch. Often we watch with a sort ofmalign neglect. We almost wait for him to fail Bahut samajhtaa thaa apneaap ko... Often we paste a motive on him, Failed in his job... A publicityhound... Having pasted a motive, we exempt ourselves from doing anythinglike him. After all, we have not failed at our jobs, after all we are not desperatefor publicity... We must reverse these attitudes:

Look out for such work;

Let persons doing such work know that you treasure what they are doing andare grateful to them.

I would put great store by even these simple, costless changes even a

change just in the way we look. Were we to act even on that lovely slogan fromThailand, Those who smile thrice a day, will please make it six times, wewould commence a change within us, and thereby in our environment. Whenwe look out not for problems, not for deficiencies, for things not done, not for theone next to us who is not doing his bit, but for things done, for persons doinggood, even more so when we ourselves do something to help specially if wedo something to help someone who cannot do anything for us in return ourentire outlook changes. Over time, we are transformed.

It is the lesson that everyone living with a handicapped child learns servingthe helpless child changes us inside out. It has been truly said, Service isselfish! So, we should scout for solutions around us, on the Internet, insurvival manuals. And translate them into our own day-to-day life. A thing that

needs to be done will get done, of course. But even more consequential, thefeeling of helplessness that so often envelopes us will evaporate. Once agroup, and not just an individual, adopts the solution, the transformation willnaturally be much wider. Account after account of the kind that I have recalledabove reports how, once they had got together to execute the project, feuding,acrimonious conglomerations became communities. Constructing that check-dam, building a community gobar-gas plant and systematically collecting dungand agricultural waste for it, cultivating Spirulina, harvesting water vaultedbickering sections above caste, above narrow religiosity.

arun shourie's article

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