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 very
well. He is able to speak — but only word by familiar word, often just
syllable 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 for
delicate 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 someone
feed him. The other is to give him a spoon that has been specially bent — so
that when he takes it the distance he normally does, it goes into his mouth. But
when he tries to scoop some food with it — say, rice — he is liable to shovel the
rice off the plate. Solution? Serve the rice to him in a thali. The spoon will keep
pushing the rice till the spoon comes to a halt at the wall of the thali. The force
of Adit’s hand as the spoon pushes against the wall of the thali, however, is
liable to push the thali off the table. Solution? Make a cavity in the table, place
the thali in it.

To move a wheelchair forward or back, you have to move both wheels

simultaneously. But our Adit can use only his left arm and hand. So he can pull
or push only the left wheel of his wheelchair. The result? The wheelchair will
just 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 and
feeble in any case. They would atrophy if he did not have at least some
exercise, if they were not made to bear weight at least for some duration during
the day. At the Centre for Special Education, the world-class school in Delhi of
the 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. Adit’s legs are tied into gaiters. He is lifted
in 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 pencil
in a clay sort of material, had him hold it till it took the shape of his grasp. The
material was left to solidify. From then on, the pencil was easy for him to hold.
Children like him can’t grasp pieces of ‘‘normal’’ jigsaw puzzles. The teachers
put knobs on each piece.

Some of the children can paint. Their paintings take one’s breath away: the
lines are so novel and bold, the colours so unexpected and vivid. In the early
years the Society requested some of the country’s leading artists to permit
greeting cards to be made from their paintings. Cards made from the paintings
of 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 their
paintings.
But some of the children cannot paint. So, in the way they had put knobs and
thereby enabled children to do jigsaw puzzles, the teachers taught children to
hold blocks — of the kind that are used to print our textiles; to press them on an
ink-pad like pad; and to then press the blocks onto a sheet of paper. But the
children would have difficulty in bringing their hand down in such a way that the
figures 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 the
sheet was done, the child would have difficulty in moving it away, picking up the
next one and placing it straight so as to begin printing again. Solution? A
teacher put the paper on a roller attached to the side of the table. When the
child was done with one ‘‘length’’, he would move the roller and the next length
would 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. He
cannot therefore use a normal toilet. Solution? A wheelchair with a cavity that
slides over the normal pot. But parents in villages are unable to acquire chairs
of 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 to
make a potty chair, and place a large leaf or used newspaper under it so that
the faeces could be easily removed. There are scores of other devices that
teachers of the Centre have made — devices that require next to no outlay but
which 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 in
Hyderabad for a summit on Information Technology. The high point — one that
moved the ministers to the depths of their hearts — was a demonstration by
four children. They were from the Government School for Blind Girls in
Hyderabad. WEBEL has redesigned the standard keyboard so that little Salma
with her lovely, tiny hands typed away using just nine keys. At the touch of a
key, the typed text was printed in ordinary type — every normal person could
read 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 been
developed that scans a page a line at a time. The text is automatically
transformed into Braille. Little pins rise and fall through a slit in the device to
form the line that has been scanned. The child would move her finger over that
slit, 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 software
by which, with just a click or two, the child can go to her favourite newspaper
there, and the computer reads it out to her. And it reads out the text not word by
halting, disjointed word. It reads the text as continuous sentences — with
appropriate 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. His
spontaneous response had nothing to do with himself. ‘‘Sir, I look after 300
blind girls,’’ he said. ‘‘But we are in quarters. What we need is a new building.’’
Mr Chandrababu Naidu promised the new building there and then, so powerful
had 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 three
blocks with courtyards in each block. How could one enable a child to know the block in which
he was at any moment? How could one guide him through the corridor from one block to the
other? Gautam first used the railing along the walls: in one block he made it triangular; in the
next he made it square; and in the third, circular. The child would just have to touch the
railing, and he would know where he was. Next, he made the floor in each part of the corridor
different. 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 Sabha
are given Rs 12 crores for financing development projects. I gave the entire amount to the IIT
at 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 a
world-class building that has a built-up area of 64,000 square feet. I had wanted that visiting
the building itself should be an education. Therefore, I had requested the architects, the late
Mr Kanvinde and his associates, to build in features that had struck me in the building of
TERI, The Energy Research Institute, outside Delhi.

TERI taught us that 4 metres below the surface of the earth, the temperature is always
around 24 degrees. Therefore, a tunnel has been built at that depth, and fans have been
installed to pump air from the tunnel into the building. As a result, when in winter the
temperature 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 the
temperature 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 ones
that broke during construction or that could be purchased as malba. This simple device
reflects back into the sky 85 per cent of the scorching sunlight. On the south side, they have
planted deciduous trees — mulberry, champa — that will be full of leaves in summer to shield
the building from sunlight, but will shed them in winter to let in sunlight. Solar panels have
been installed, cavities have been built into the walls, and the roof has been filled with
insulation material — and you don’t need expensive material for that, just hollow, inverted
earthen pots will do. You could have a white removable cover that is stretched across the roof
during the day, and rolled aside during the night.

A dozen innovative features of this kind have together ensured that, while in the normal
course a building of this size would have required 225 tonnes of air-conditioning load, the new
bio-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 others
have built structures with what are called Trombe walls — named after Felix Trombe, a
French designer. On the southern side, first there is glazing; next a gap for air; then a thick
masonry wall — painted black. There are vents at the top of the wall and the bottom. The air
that is heated between the glazed surface and the wall rises and goes through the gap at the
top into the rooms; the cool air from the rooms comes in from the gap at the bottom and gets
heated in the space between the glazing and the black wall. Citing relevant literature, a TERI
publication reports, ‘‘In buildings with thermal storage walls, indoor temperature can be
maintained at about 15 degrees centigrade when the outside temperature is as low as minus
11 degrees centigrade...’’ (TERI, Energy-efficient buildings in India, Ministry of Non-
conventional Energy Sources, New Delhi, 2001. Edited by Mili Majumdar, the publication is
full of luminous ideas.)

As water also stores heat, you can stack drums of water in the gap, paint them black and
obtain the same effect. The walls and roof in the biosciences building at IIT, Kanpur have
been designed to let in a lot of outdoor light — wide, large windows; an atrium that lets in light
for the lush greenery in it. Together with the care that has been devoted to choosing lighting
fixtures, these features ensure that the draft on electricity has been minimized. As the IIT is a
high-tech place, sensors turn off the lights as sunlight lights up the room to given
specifications — there are different sensors for different rows of lights; the ones near the
windows get switched off first. The sensors turn off the remaining lights when all occupants
have 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 every
viewer to look around his house, and turn off lights that are on unnecessarily. What an
elegant solution, and everyone gets to participate in alleviating a national problem.

Laurie Baker’s buildings are full of such gems. I still remember a simple illustration that I saw
in a report he did for the Government of Kerala decades ago. How should one reduce the
temperature in a hut? Do not use whitewash inside the hut. Instead, use it outside, specifically
on the thatched roof. Let the longer part of the hut be perpendicular to the direction of the
sea-breeze. At the bottom of that side, do not have a solid wall, just trellis. Have trellis on the
opposite wall too — but at the top. The sea-breeze will enter the hut via the former. Hot air will
exit 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 one’s spirit is that each device has
sprung 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 by

the cleanliness of its public toilets. But I have never been able to
figure 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. We
were at a friend’s house for lunch. He was dressed as always — elegantly, with
his bow tie. ‘‘You Punjabis are so hard-working,’’ he said. ‘‘But why is it that you
have not yet produced a really large industrial house?’’ I offered one conjecture
after another, only to have them shown up.

The conversation drifted. ‘‘What is the most profitable investment I have

made?’’ he asked. He explained. He had gone to drop a grandson to school. He
had to use the toilet. The bathroom was as they usually are — dirty and
reeking. He instituted an award. Unknown, unannounced, persons would visit
schools in the Pune area over the year. The principal of the school that had the
cleanest toilets would get an award of Rs 25,000. The award made such a
difference. His family continues it to this day.

Pune also has one of the best examples of that sort of cleaning up that I have
come across, though on an even larger scale. There was a ganda nallah behind
Acharya Rajneesh’s ashram at the Koregaon colony. Several streams of
stinking, polluted, black muck poured into it. The stench was unbearable. After
Acharya Rajneesh passed away, his followers — after the usual tussle — got
permission to convert that nallah into a public park, a Japanese garden. They
planted weeds and roots of various kinds. These and a few pumps today work a
miracle 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
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 to
hold 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 the
glass plate; it drains into the pipe; the pipe conveys it into a vessel. The water is
free 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 an
‘‘inflatable-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 of
water adhere to the wick’s fine fibers creating a large surface area for
evaporation,’’ we learn. ‘‘This causes the air inside the cone to become
saturated with water vapour. Moist, heated air travels upward until it contacts
the surface of the cone. Pure, uncontaminated water droplets roll down into a
collection pocket around the rim of the AquaCone...’’ (As an example look up,
http://www.solarsolutions.info/ educational/ education alright.html from which
this 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 one
answer. But Dr Homi Bhabha directed that at the atomic power plant they make
a fountain of the water as it comes out of the plant — the air will cool the
droplets. Even if you have to cool it further and have therefore to have the
chilling plant in any case, as you would be sending cooled-down water from the
fountain 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? The
excruciatingly heavy wooden wheels; the thick, heavy wooden yoke that lay
atop the poor animal’s neck and shoulders. The bullock — straining; his neck
and shoulders, bruised, often bleeding. I still remember the evangelical zeal
with which Dr N.S. Ramaswamy, then Director, IIM, Bangalore, set about to
improve the design. He replaced the wooden wheels with used rubber tyres; he
built ball bearings into the wheels; he redesigned the yoke to cushion the
contact with the animal’s 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 bank
of coiled springs and wheels that are fitted into the rickshaw. These are
stretched as the brakes are applied. A ratchet is activated at the end of the
braking operation, the professors explain, and it ensures that the energy
remains stored in the springs as long as the brakes are applied. As the brakes
are released, the springs unwind gradually and the stored energy flows back
into the driving wheel through a clutch. The rickshaw starts moving with little or
no effort by the driver. The professors calculate that sixty per cent of the kinetic
energy is retrieved because of the innovation.

When I request him for examples of such sparkling ideas, Dr R A Mashelkar

sends two volumes published by the National Innovation Foundation, India
Innovates. These contain scores and scores of examples — that arrest, amuse,
inspire. Remya Jose is a student of the 12th class in Palakkad, Kerala. She has
to spend two hours each way and change three buses going to and returning
from school. Her mother fell sick. Her father had been suffering from cancer. In
addition to all that she already had to do, she now had to wash the clothes of
her sisters. She designed a washing-cum-exercising machine. It is a box with a
rotating strainer drum and two pedals. The drum rotates as you exercise by
moving the pedals just the way you would on a bicycle. The cost? A mere Rs
1,500!

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

You would have seen visuals of farmers using sprayers. The sprayer is carried
as 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 Parabat
Vaghani and Arvindbhai from Gujarat working independently have developed a
new design. They have devised a foot pedal. The sandals are connected to the
sprayer through tubes. The device pumps air into the sprayer’s tank as you
walk. Both your hands are now free to spray — efficiency is thus doubled, and
the energy consumption is slashed.

Several persons, the National Innovation Foundation reports, have developed

cycle-based pumps to lift water — in minor irrigation works, in cities to upper
floors. Kanak Das from Assam has developed a variant of the IIT device for
improving the standard rickshaw. Because of the uneven surface, the bumps
and depressions in our roads, the cycle slows down. Das has attached a battery
of six springs beneath the pedals. It converts the vertical energy generated by
the bumps into horizontal energy to propel the rear wheel. Thus, every time the
rider 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. There
just isn’t enough water and fodder to keep them alive. Apart from the immense
suffering this causes, agricultural operations too suffer — as the farmers
depend on animals for draught power. Mansukhbhai Jagani of Saurashtra has
devised a replacement for the bullocks. He converted his Enfield motorcycle
into a diesel driven one. Next, he replaced the rear wheel by an attachment that
has tools for ploughing, sowing, inter-culturing etc. — all the operations that are
traditionally 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 when
we 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 very
useful it is. N V Satyanarayana of Vishakhapattnam has gone one better. He
has developed a micro-windmill — of just 3.5x3 cm, with a blade of 10 cm
diameter. It uses the merest breeze — you get much more than his device
needs 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 you
walk, the rotor of the dynamo rotates, electricity is generated, and rechargeable
batteries are charged!

The National Innovation Foundation’s volumes set out scores of such sparkling
ideas, 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 9000
kg per hectare and becomes the rage in the region; another develops a variety
of nutmeg that yields larger fruit; a third develops a latex-free jackfruit; several
farmers working independently in different parts of the country develop herbal
pesticides; others develop herbal remedies for livestock; we encounter an entire
community that uses herbal extracts for preventive health care.

A 3-wheel tractor, a cotton stripping machine, a palm and coconut leaf mat
weaving 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 break
the coconut and collect its water. Apart from the idea, the thing that lifts one’s
spirit is that each device, each innovative product has sprung from a person of
no means, often of little education.

The writer is Union Minister for Disinvestment, Communications and

Information Technology
ENABLING IDEAS PART-III

Vitamins from scum, income from filth

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

ARUN SHOURIE

A shelf-full of hope

I request Sunita Narain, director of The Centre for Science and

Environment, for examples of persons who have made a difference
at next to no cost. From the recent issues of the Centre’s magazine,
Down to Earth, she sends me a shelf-full of hope. From Latur in Maharashtra to
Sanganer in Rajasthan to Kalpi in UP to Auroville in Pondicherry, women are
using agro-waste and rags to make exquisite art-paper for high-income users,
filter paper for pharmaceutical companies. The product and process benefit the
environment 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 lakhs
required for a normal paper mill; the paper is not bleached; the process is
labour intensive; it requires almost no skills — and so destitute, disabled
women make a good living.

The Hindustan Aeronautics’ uses its 3 tonnes of daily canteen waste to produce
230 cylinders of biogas per year. It harvests rain water — thus saving 3,600,000
litres 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 Works
to Pitthoragarh and other places in Uttaranchal small bands have transformed
the environment by persuading shopkeepers, consumers, wholesalers to shun
plastic bags, to either opt for paper bags or just bring their own jute bag when
they come shopping.

In Mumbai, in Pune, in Chennai individuals, groups of housewives have brought

cheer to their lives, they have relieved municipalities of work the latter were in
any case not doing. They have accomplished this by transforming their kitchen
garbage into roof gardens. They separate bio-degradable waste from the non-
degradable kind. They put the former into composting pits in the localities, or in
earthen pots on their own roofs. They introduce earthworm culture into the
waste. The earthworms transform the waste into manure: much sooner than
would be the case otherwise — ‘‘at the end of a week,’’ says the report from
Chennai. Compost for flowers, for vegetables, for shrubs in the pots. On the
roofs of evangelist-pioneers, S A Dabholkar in Kolhapur and R T Doshi in
Mumbai 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 them
to farm a slimy algae, Spirulina. Apart from Vitamin A, minerals, essential amino
acids, Down to Earth reports, this ‘‘scum’’ contains 60 per cent protein as
against the 20-40 per cent we find in pulses. The Centre for Biofertilizers in
Madurai sells powdered algae for use in combination with inorganic fertilizers.
Others in the area distribute vermiculture as a complete substitute for inorganic
fertilizers. 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 a

compound of cattle urine and neem steeped in a pit as a pesticide. He uses
coconut leaves, husk and weeds as mulch to be put around coconut palms. He
plants five curry plants around each coconut tree, and raises coffee plants in
rows between those trees. Two school teachers take 8 hectares of degraded
wasteland in Agali village, Palakkad district, Kerala, and heal it back into
cultivable condition ‘‘through mulching, water conservation and silviculture,
without any ploughing, fertilizers or pesticides.’’

In Pondicherry and again near Mysore, farms are rid completely of inorganic
fertilizers and pesticides with ‘‘a mash of leaves, cattle dung and a carefully
chosen mix of crops’’; in the Mysore case, the couple establish that ‘‘half a litre
of garlic juice mixed with 4 litres of water on a 0.2 hectare plot is enough to
protect cabbage,’’ that ‘‘a decoction of vica, an ornamental plant, is also an
effective pesticide, while spraying dried cowdung soaked in water for a day on
vegetable crops enhances productivity.’’

The headmaster of a primary school utilizes research done at the Centre for
Application of Science and Technology to Rural Areas to build an improved
stove 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 that
‘‘burnt’’ taste, and also preventing harm to their eyes — for the stove emits no
smoke. A post-graduate capitalizes on the people’s preference for organic food,
and has his produce certified as organic by the Institute of Marketing in distant
Switzerland.

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 3
months. His pasion is to change the way we treat garbage. He has organized
residents’ associations for this purpose in Delhi. He put his stay in the jail to
exemplary use. Tihar had 3,000 inmates. Between them they generated 45,000
kg of garbage every week. The jail was filthy — the Down to Earth writer
described it as ‘‘despicable’’. Garbage was collected twice a week by the
municipal truck — inefficiently at that, with a good portion of it getting dropped
on the way out. Yadav got fellow prisoners to separate bio-degradable from
non-degradable waste. He persuaded the jail authorities to allow him and his
fellow-prisoners to dig five large pits within the compound. The non-degradable
waste was sold systematically to kabariwalas. The bio-degradable portion was
put 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 programme
was already yielding Rs 11,000 a month — after deducting Rs 300 per head for
the eleven prisoners who had been engaged in collecting and segregating the
waste. The income would soon shoot up as the compost matured and could be
marketed. A goodly portion of the income was being contributed to the
Prisoner’s Welfare Fund — through it, families of prisoners that were not able to
support themselves because the main breadwinner was in the jail, were being
helped. Part of the compost was being earmarked for a tree plantation scheme
that the jail had taken up — the jail is spread over 161 hectares. What an
example!

The next story was about Darshan Singh Tabiba, an innovative farmer from
Hiatpur village of Ludhiana District in Punjab. His farm ‘‘is unique,’’ the Down to
Earth 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 poultry
waste is used as pig feed. The pig excreta and dairy waste are drained into a
three-hectare pond as an addition to the fish feed. The pigsty is built near the
pond’s edge so that urine, which has nitrogenous compounds such as
ammonia, automatically flows into the pond. And the pond water is used for
irrigation. ‘‘Thanks to the nitrogen enriched pond water, I use about 25 per cent
less urea compared to other farmers harvesting the same yield,’’ says a proud
Tabiba.

Tabiba is also using the waste from the nearby sugarcane industry, reports the
correspondent. He uses pressmud, a byproduct rich in protein that is available
free and for the asking, to feed fish, pigs and cattle. Against the national
freshwater 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 Chennai
and the mission of its Vice Chancellor, A Kalanidhi. The entire campus is being
transformed — access of vehicles restricted; water-harvesting; recycling water
from hostels, kitchens, laboratories; sewage treatment plant; vegetables being
grown organically in what were barren, empty spaces; trees being planted in
large numbers; sale of cigarettes and tobacco banned; the use of plastic bags
banned; composting pits...

Groups upon groups have commenced efforts to harvest water. And many have
improvised innovations even as they have built the check-dams and ancillary
structures. The earthen structures to dam the water are usually built as a
straight wall is built. The National Innovation Foundation’s second Award went
to Bhanjibhai Mathukia, a 70 year old innovator ‘‘who has been tinkering with
machines from his childhood.’’ Just as arches enable a builder to save on lintels
and 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 of
labour. No help was sought or received from any governmental agency. An
entire village was transformed. But when the reservoir fills, rain water flows over
and is lost. In Kutch the villagers improvise a solution: a trench is dug in the
riverbed till it touches the impervious rock layer, Down to Earth reports. On the
downstream side of the trench a plastic sheet is draped to trap the water, and
lead it to the aquifer. The trench is filled.

Why don’t we notice such things, things that are happening all around us? Why
can’t 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
 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 in
the 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 even
Cherrapunji — the place that, we used to be taught in our school-days, receives
the maximum rainfall in the world — is short of water for eight months in the
year!

But there is the simplest solution, it is right in front of our eyes. The largest
water-harvesting project in Kochi, Down to Earth reports, has been undertaken
at the Maharaja’s College — it will harvest over 3 lakh litres. The project uses
two tanks that were once upon a time used for a gas plant by the college’s
Chemistry Department but had for long been lying abandoned. As part of the
National Service Scheme, students cleaned the tanks, they strengthened the
floor. In Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh, water is being harvested by rehabilitating
the traditional hand-hewn caves, the khatris. In Jharbeda, a tribal village in
Sundergarh, Orissa, water has been harvested by rehabilitating the local
ghagra, a pond-like structure lying at the base of the slope of a hill — the pond
has been revived, and a wide drain dug from the top of the hill to carry rain
water to this structure. In Chennai, a commendable programme has been
initiated to revive temple tanks. In another excellent initiative, water which used
to 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 and
percolation pits have been dug along the way. The simplest steps, nothing that
requires space-science, using areas, structures that were lying abandoned,
broken down in front of everyone’s eyes. And yet steps that spell the difference
between an obstacle and an opportunity.

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

• Just as development is not just outlays, it certainly isn’t just Government

outlays, a revolution is not one person doing one incredible thing but a million
persons doing a million things differently.

• Each one of us can be a part of that sort of revolution. I am reminded of this

every day as I see my father, now 91, labouring away with just a ballpoint and
paper; 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 a
difference, and each of us can make a difference to the lives of thousands in
the farthest corners of the country.

• Every little thing we do can be part of that revolution. I was staying at a Zen
temple 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 to
the temple so that the paper could be gifted for use again. She told me that
used stamps are systematically collected and sent abroad — to be sold to
stamp collectors, the proceeds in turn being given to charity organisations.

One of the most conscientious of officers I have ever come across, Narottam
Tripathi retired as UP’s Secretary, Forests. Since then — he is now past 80 —
he has devoted himself to helping retired government servants, who are too old
or otherwise unable, and their families to collect their pension benefits, to
access medical facilities.

Remember Gandhiji — he had a programme for everyone. If someone could

face death, he had a programme for her. If one could not face death but could
devote her life to constructive work, he had a programme. If one could give up
his career and go to jail, he had a programme. If one could not do that but spin
in the privacy of one’s home, Gandhiji had a programme. If one could not do
even that much but could merely sing, Gandhiji had the Ramdhun, the evening
prayer through which one could attune to the national struggle for freedom. Nor
was all this just formal association. Everything was linked to the great purpose
as every little rivulet contributes to the mighty Brahmaputra.

Development is no different. There is a related fact. In sphere after sphere, in

every part of the country individuals and groups are doing work that is both
creative as well as service. If only one-tenth of the effort that is spent to knit
together ‘‘activists’’ who are shouting against something were spent on knitting
those who are doing good work, would that not work a revolution? An even
simpler effort would help immensely. All too often we do not even notice the
good 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 of
‘‘malign neglect’’. We almost wait for him to fail — ‘‘Bahut samajhtaa thaa apne
aap ko...’’ Often we paste a motive on him, ‘‘Failed in his job... A publicity
hound...’’ Having pasted a motive, we exempt ourselves from doing anything
like him. After all, we have not failed at our jobs, after all we are not desperate
for publicity... We must reverse these attitudes:

• Look out for such work;

• Let persons doing such work know that you treasure what they are doing and
are 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 from
Thailand, ‘‘Those who smile thrice a day, will please make it six times,’’ we
would commence a change within us, and thereby in our environment. When
we look out not for problems, not for deficiencies, for things not done, not for the
one next to us who is not doing his bit, but for things done, for persons doing
good, even more so when we ourselves do something to help — specially if we
do something to help someone who cannot do anything for us in return — our
entire outlook changes. Over time, we are transformed.

It is the lesson that everyone living with a handicapped child learns — serving
the helpless child changes us inside out. It has been truly said, ‘‘Service is
selfish!’’ So, we should scout for solutions — around us, on the Internet, in
survival 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, the
feeling of helplessness that so often envelopes us will evaporate. Once a
group, and not just an individual, adopts the solution, the transformation will
naturally be much wider. Account after account of the kind that I have recalled
above 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 dung
and agricultural waste for it, cultivating Spirulina, harvesting water vaulted
bickering sections above caste, above narrow religiosity.