Last weekend was one of my best investments to rejuvenate life. I went on a short trip to Sundarban.
For those who have not heard about Sundarban, it is world’s largest mangrove forest home to Royal Bengal Tiger situated on the eastern part of India bordering Bangladesh. While writing I became conscious about the fact “world’s largest…”, are we(the Indians) too focused on largest, biggest, fastest etc etc . In a zeal to quantify all good or bad things, we loose focus on quality. Which is why Niagra Falls is in our must see checklist, when visiting US, but a waterfall in Nilgiris is given a skip. However let me stick to Sundarban for today.
Last Saturday my family and my sisters back packed and left for Sundarban. Entire arrangement was outsourced, all we needed was to board a local train and reach a port named “Canning”. It is an hour’s journey from the place I live in Kolkata. From Canning we were to board a steamer, which would take us through numerous rivers and canals. The trip was for two days, with a night halt in a small resting junction.
People visit Sundarban with an expectation of catching a glimpse of Royal Bengal Tiger in the open expanse. However I had no such notion, I had my reasons too. Firstly with temperatures hovering around 41 degree celcius, tigers are unlikely to have the excitement of watching a homo sapiens, who are unpleasant animals anyway. Secondly Sundarban in India is about 2700+ sq. km. and last census counted only 270+ tigers in the zone. The probability of getting to see one was equal to winning the lotto.
My idea was to laze around soaking in the tranquility of nature. On that front Sundarban was grand success. Sundarban also gave me
something, which I was not ready for, a new view point.
Sundarban made me realize why West Bengal state governments project “Nano” was a failure. Why Mamata was right, even though her ways were wrong. Before last weekend, failure of “Nano” was a mystery to me. Like many others I thought that our state is doomed to remain backwards. Why on earth a few people should stop what was so obviously a forward looking step in employment generation and general well being of the area?
Looking back at my trip, my views have changed. Canning is less than an hour’s journey in the local train, our household maid belongs to Canning, and she travels everyday to Jadavpur(where I live) a bustling part of Kolkata, much sought after real-estate location. As per the train ticket Jadavpur is merely 38 kms from Canning. Canning does not have full electricity coverage and drinking water is a privilege!
Canning onwards primary mode of power is diesel run generators. I am not finicky about getting mineral water, but even a reasonable level of clean water is scarce and you have to plan to procure it beforehand.
The night halt was named “Apanjan” or “Your own ones” was a very nice place, but there, you are paying for every drop of drinking water, since they have to get it from a place 7 kms away!
Electricity is available only between 6pm to 10 pm because the power is supplied through diesel generator!
When you consider this against the backdrop of “Nano”, question does arise, did our government have their priorities right?
If the idea was to generate employment, can we not copy Chinese model of utilizing small village communities to setup small hydro-electric power generators. Chinese model runs on theory of co-operative society and any excess power is provided to national grid. We are matching China in population but our hydro-electric power generation is only 20% of China’s.
Small village based community takes care of employment generation and co-operative nature about sustainability. If the argument is that a hydro-electric plant needs skilled force, well if we hope to train and deploy an nth generation farmer to make automotives, we can train them to generate electricity as well. What more small hydro-electric plants do not need costly investments, can be setup quickly.
Once few such plants come up, they will need maintenance, spare parts etc. etc. voila before you realize lot of indirect employment is generated.
Most importantly I feel that with innovative modeling of part-time labor concept, village youth may eye this as opportunity to garner extra income. Much like the concept of IT training institute which is filled with many aspirants, who are not actually eyeing the next software engineering job, instead they wish to utilize IT to supplement their income.
If the argument is that people of the region are too poor to afford electricity, one has to look at the number of mobile towers and their reach in the region. If mobile makes a business sense, can electricity be different?
What’s in it for the government and the politicians? Well despite the lack of electricity, power consumption in the region has gone up considerably I am told. Each household aspires for electricity and acquiring one generator is order of the day, much like the way our parents aspired for a television set in early 80s. The amount of diesel consumed in the area is mind boggling, all that is going up in smoke, adding to pollution and disturbing the wildlife, the lifeline of people around the area.
To me the idea seemed a no brainer, can you please help me understand, why people in the government fail to see it?
If you still have doubts, consider this - “Apanjan”, where we spent the night utilizes 10 litres of diesel for 4 hours of power. If Government is providing subsidy of Rs. 10/- per litre, it works out to be approximately Rs. 36,500 /- a year on subsidy, and I mentioned only one spot in a tiny village in an area spawning 2700+ sq. kms.!!
For those who have not heard about Sundarban, it is world’s largest mangrove forest home to Royal Bengal Tiger situated on the eastern part of India bordering Bangladesh. While writing I became conscious about the fact “world’s largest…”, are we(the Indians) too focused on largest, biggest, fastest etc etc . In a zeal to quantify all good or bad things, we loose focus on quality. Which is why Niagra Falls is in our must see checklist, when visiting US, but a waterfall in Nilgiris is given a skip. However let me stick to Sundarban for today.
Last Saturday my family and my sisters back packed and left for Sundarban. Entire arrangement was outsourced, all we needed was to board a local train and reach a port named “Canning”. It is an hour’s journey from the place I live in Kolkata. From Canning we were to board a steamer, which would take us through numerous rivers and canals. The trip was for two days, with a night halt in a small resting junction.People visit Sundarban with an expectation of catching a glimpse of Royal Bengal Tiger in the open expanse. However I had no such notion, I had my reasons too. Firstly with temperatures hovering around 41 degree celcius, tigers are unlikely to have the excitement of watching a homo sapiens, who are unpleasant animals anyway. Secondly Sundarban in India is about 2700+ sq. km. and last census counted only 270+ tigers in the zone. The probability of getting to see one was equal to winning the lotto.
My idea was to laze around soaking in the tranquility of nature. On that front Sundarban was grand success. Sundarban also gave me
something, which I was not ready for, a new view point.Sundarban made me realize why West Bengal state governments project “Nano” was a failure. Why Mamata was right, even though her ways were wrong. Before last weekend, failure of “Nano” was a mystery to me. Like many others I thought that our state is doomed to remain backwards. Why on earth a few people should stop what was so obviously a forward looking step in employment generation and general well being of the area?
Looking back at my trip, my views have changed. Canning is less than an hour’s journey in the local train, our household maid belongs to Canning, and she travels everyday to Jadavpur(where I live) a bustling part of Kolkata, much sought after real-estate location. As per the train ticket Jadavpur is merely 38 kms from Canning. Canning does not have full electricity coverage and drinking water is a privilege!
Canning onwards primary mode of power is diesel run generators. I am not finicky about getting mineral water, but even a reasonable level of clean water is scarce and you have to plan to procure it beforehand.
The night halt was named “Apanjan” or “Your own ones” was a very nice place, but there, you are paying for every drop of drinking water, since they have to get it from a place 7 kms away!
Electricity is available only between 6pm to 10 pm because the power is supplied through diesel generator!
When you consider this against the backdrop of “Nano”, question does arise, did our government have their priorities right?
If the idea was to generate employment, can we not copy Chinese model of utilizing small village communities to setup small hydro-electric power generators. Chinese model runs on theory of co-operative society and any excess power is provided to national grid. We are matching China in population but our hydro-electric power generation is only 20% of China’s.
Small village based community takes care of employment generation and co-operative nature about sustainability. If the argument is that a hydro-electric plant needs skilled force, well if we hope to train and deploy an nth generation farmer to make automotives, we can train them to generate electricity as well. What more small hydro-electric plants do not need costly investments, can be setup quickly.
Once few such plants come up, they will need maintenance, spare parts etc. etc. voila before you realize lot of indirect employment is generated.
Most importantly I feel that with innovative modeling of part-time labor concept, village youth may eye this as opportunity to garner extra income. Much like the concept of IT training institute which is filled with many aspirants, who are not actually eyeing the next software engineering job, instead they wish to utilize IT to supplement their income.
If the argument is that people of the region are too poor to afford electricity, one has to look at the number of mobile towers and their reach in the region. If mobile makes a business sense, can electricity be different?
What’s in it for the government and the politicians? Well despite the lack of electricity, power consumption in the region has gone up considerably I am told. Each household aspires for electricity and acquiring one generator is order of the day, much like the way our parents aspired for a television set in early 80s. The amount of diesel consumed in the area is mind boggling, all that is going up in smoke, adding to pollution and disturbing the wildlife, the lifeline of people around the area.
To me the idea seemed a no brainer, can you please help me understand, why people in the government fail to see it?
If you still have doubts, consider this - “Apanjan”, where we spent the night utilizes 10 litres of diesel for 4 hours of power. If Government is providing subsidy of Rs. 10/- per litre, it works out to be approximately Rs. 36,500 /- a year on subsidy, and I mentioned only one spot in a tiny village in an area spawning 2700+ sq. kms.!!
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