Ayan Deb (ELP 2021) | Hub Manager Central and West India, Tata Trusts, India
The process of inquiry in the development sector gained recognition in the mid-1980s when the development discourse started moving away from top-down approaches. Robert Chambers, a professor from the University of Sussex, was one of the pioneers of putting poor and marginalized people at the center of development policy creation.
My first time understanding the participatory inquiry process was when doing my post-graduation in 2003-05. Most notably, seasonality ranking, causal relationships, resource, and social mapping, matrix ranking, social relationships, etc. The key idea I learned was to ‘hand over the stick’ and create a level playing field while discussing with the community.
Fast forward to 2020-21, in my current work, I use my understanding of multi-sector interventions (especially on agriculture and allied-based livelihoods) to integrate renewable energy within the existing value chain.
The initial years of the renewable energy work have seen an unprecedented number of solar installations remaining underutilized. The graph below illustrates installed drinking water system usage patterns and excess energy remaining unutilized.
Graph of Instant Power in kW v. time in hours for Dashama Mandir.
With the spirit of understanding, I undertook a detailed inquiry to understand the extent of usability, the reason for underutilization, and the scope of further utilization of it.
An Example:
In the Dahod and Sirohi districts of Gujarat and Rajasthan, my organization has installed close to 150 solar drinking water and lift irrigation schemes. The primary objective was drudgery reduction, increased additional income from the replacement of fossil fuels, and sustaining the operation and maintenance of the structure through water tariffs collected by the user groups.
Undertaking a participatory process on understanding use of excess energy
However, every interaction with the community is full of surprises. In the foothills of Aravalli, which is a dry zone, is a village called Warkikheda. The installation of a 3 HP solar pump for drinking water continues to draw water beyond the initial estimate of 70 liters per person. Despite that, there was still three to four hours of peak sunshine which remained ideal. What started as an exercise to understand the pattern of drinking water usage, has now realized that there is the potential to use the surplus energy created within the system. The participatory process, which involved multiple rounds of interaction, helped us understand the current usage pattern and demystified the hours of non-usage and energy generated. After this process, the village women defined their daily routines and their definition of drudgery. This process was related to the kind of machinery or technology which could be incorporated to reduce drudgery. After that, a ranking exercise was conducted, which matched different drudgeries and possible machinery which could replace it and be powered by the available solar energy. Post finalization, the next step was to define the business plan, which included the ownership structure, roles and responsibilities, site selection, operation and maintenance, and the break-even.
The entire process took three sittings. A few reflections which came from the exercises were:
- The need for our quest to use excess energy vs. the human tendency to overuse resources to maintain quality of life.
- The difficulty in breaking away from ‘drudgery’, because of the interconnectedness of lives. Women fetching water takes 4 hours of drudgery, but she also allows cattle to graze and gives them water. Other events, like taking 2 hours weekly to go to the flour mill, are missed in her articulation if she is not questioned appropriately.
- The perspective of women on quality of life encompasses other elements- safety being one of them.
- There is always an entrepreneurial spark within communities. The idea is to identify underdeveloped sectors, provide guidance, and help develop businesses that are most needed.
- The community understands the science and can help demystify problems. Usually, outsiders (the engineer or social worker) keep the knowledge they discover to themselves and have the mindset that community members won't understand. This comes from the assumed roles of givers and receivers, which need to be dissolved in the community and on the facilitator's end. The next step is to define appropriate avenues to communicate the science.
One major issue in planning the use of surplus energy is environmental, as larger-sized pumps without proper community management process will gradually lead to over-extraction. Putting the energy generated into a productive load could lead to the judicious use of groundwater.
Examples of this have been seen in Jharkhand, where a surplus of 7000 KWH is generated from 5 horsepower(hp) pumps. Putting this excess into various productive and innovative ways could create an optimal balance between water extraction for income and energy production for other activities.
The east Indian state of Jharkhand still uses sub-surface water, and the commercialization of agriculture in this tribal heartland is gradually taking over. The shift from diesel pumps to solar is rapid, and this is due to government subsidies to offset initial capital costs. To shift to the judicious use of water information must be communicated within and by the community.
Application of systems thinking and participatory groundwater management around solar pumps:
Systems thinking gives an overview of the interconnectedness within a system or subsystem. It defines the causal relationship, the balancing and reinforcing loops, and provides a macro perspective. The process of undertaking it is participatory, wherein the group undertaking the exercise develops the system based on its understanding.
Figure 3: Causal loop diagram on solar pumps installed by CInI. Courtesy: Desta
The work outlined previously leads to the collection of data on groundwater well behavior. Characterization of wells in certain regions is being developed through the processes outlined above. This characterization provides insights into the aquifer and helps identify the recharge and discharge zones. With this understanding, the next steps are to have a workshop with the community and civil society organization members to understand their perspectives on the causal loops and interlinking with the maps.
The outcome intended for the work is a participatory understanding of the entire system. The expectation is that this work will lead to the development of groundwater protocols and of crop planning which balances both income and groundwater reality.
Thus we are trying to have a combined understanding of the usage of excess energy, groundwater protocols, and systems thinking. This effort is focused on behavior change at the level of community, and creating default checks and balances. Checks and balances are incorporated as the diversion of excess energy from the system into other non-extractive but productive loads.
Postscript: Why is this endeavor important?
South Asia, or rather India, is the largest extractor of groundwater. The success of the green revolution, which made the nation food self-sufficient, was built on the use of groundwater. The green revolution helped the nation create surplus grains. However, it continues to have a serious effect on groundwater, soil salinity, and human health.
In 2019-20, government and private agency action resulted in the implementation of solar pumps in large quantities. Solar pumps will gradually replace the diesel-intensive agriculture in eastern India and probably replace/compete with electric pumps in the west. However, one consequence is the over-extraction of groundwater as there are no checks on the system and no recurring cost to extract water.
Top-down efforts might succeed intermittently, but a participatory understanding of the system, development of protocols, and establishment of drudgery reduction tools would go a long way to mitigating the negative effects.
About the organization:
Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI)- is an associate of Tata Trusts. CInI is a Non-Profit Organization established in May 2007 with the core focus of “Making a Sustainable Difference in the Quality of Life of Rural and Tribal Communities in the Central Indian Tribal Belt”. CInI, since its conception, has been working on focused scalable programs to strengthen the livelihoods of communities. One aspirational program being implemented by CInI is the ‘Lakhpati Kisan’ program, which supports more than 100,000 small and marginal families. The goal of this program is to meet the aspirations of these marginalized families irreversibly and sustainably. Agriculture and allied livelihoods are being layered for the smallholder family to move towards the lakhpati pathway. This is being done by women-led community institutions and micro-entrepreneurs. In the last five years, led by the community institutions, CInI has helped nearly 45,000 households become ‘Lakhpati’.
With its understanding of the agriculture value chains, CInI is working on integrating renewable energy within value chains. It is one of the nation’s most extensive renewable energy programs.
All the photos taken are owned by Collectives for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI)