The rural poor particularly the remotely located rural tribal farms have remained outside the reach of the grid power in many parts of the country. This picture is particularly true in forest villages and forest fringe villages in most parts of the country and wide swaths of land in UP, Bihar, MP, Jharkhand etc.
Given the politics of electricity charges and huge and mounting losses of distribution companies, State Governments are less than enthusiastic about expanding the reach of grid power to wider areas.
Hydrocarbon prices have been continuously rising making fuel based irrigation very expensive. In this context, solar power has come as a wonderful and sustainable solution for the rural poor. Being early to adopt and pilot, NGOs have taken to this solution quite eagerly.
Depending upon ground water level, the proximity of farm lands to each other and investing ability of farmers, a range of solutions have been adopted. More important work has also been done in regard to enabling the access to irrigation to become meaningful in terms of additional income.
Village Square brings you the webinar series as an attempt to understand from practitioners about their experience of installing solar powered irrigation schemes for their clients. The webinar is expected to discuss technical, social and organizational issues as well as the issues involved in enabling higher incomes and the way these have been tackled.
The webinar should prove useful to all entities working with the rural poor.
The webinar will have eminent speakers from the field: Santanu Dutta of Collective for Integrated Livelihood Initiatives (CInI), Anil Verma of Preservation and Proliferation of Rural Resources and Nature (PRAN), Kuntal Mukherjee from PRADAN, Victor Lesniewski from Kethworks and Sushant Pushkarna of Sarvaa Sewa Samity Sanstah (4S India).
The session will be moderated by Dr. Sanjiv Phansalkar, Director of, Vikas Anvesh Foundation.
Register here – https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_qsZIISqrSP6CSlzvwt6xrw
Please find the YouTube live link also here – https://www.youtube.com/live/qTQFEqE3FwU?feature=share
