Necessity,it is said,is the mother of invention. And it is the need of the rural kitchen,combined with the reluctance on part of the educated girls to get their hands dirty,which led the BPS Womens University at Khanpur Kalan to develop a machine that makes cow-dung cakes (known as upla in common parlance). Making upla is a traditional activity in rural Haryana. However,the educated girls,though ready to cook food on the earthen ovens (chulhas),shun the traditional activity of creating the fuel that fires the hearth. With LPG cylinders or electric heaters still to reach the interiors,the university decided to create a machine that can make uplas with minimal human intervention. The machine,an invention of the Centre for University - Society Interface & Research (CSUIR),can operate on electricity or be hand powered. A combination of dung and straw is fed into the machine. The mixture is compressed to drain out the water and dry cakes,little larger than bathing soaps,are produced. Talking about the initiative,Vice-chancellor Dr Pankal Mittal said,We need to address the problems of the society where we live. Girls now dont want to make uplas. Parents too are not ready to marry their girls in such homes where they are expected to make uplas. Hence we thought of fabricating a machine which would solve the problem. Prof Kapil Kapoor,former rector of Jawaharal Nehru University (JNU),Delhi,and director of the Centre for Indic and Asian Studies at the university is involved with the development of the machine. Talking to The Indian Express,Kapoor said that uplas produced by the machine still need to be put under sun to dry as the cakes contain some moisture. We are now trying to better the compression process so that more water is drained out and completely dry cakes are produced, he said. Mittal said effort is on to reduce the size of the model,so that it is suitable for domestic use. The machine produces about 500 uplas in an hour. After the planned improvements,the production will be doubled,she added. The university has engaged Harminder Aggarwal,an engineer from Sonepat to fabricate the machine. In addition to domestic use,the uplas can be sold to brick kilns. It can become a source of employment in villages, Aggarwal said. He is also working on improving a domestic bio-gas plant designed by the university. The bio-gas plant,little bigger than a domestic LPG cylinder,has an attached burner. The cylinder is filled with cowdung,water and molasses,to help generate methane. The gas generated fires the burner. I will put a pressure gauge on the cylinder so that the user can ascertain how much gas has been used, he said.
