In MP village, biomass power lights up lives

Evening brings smiles to the villagers’ faces as they look forward to some entertainment, be it watching a Bollywood film on the village’s only 14-inch black and white television set or sitting up to gossip until late.

Young girls can dance in the lanes after sunset now and boys can play volleyball where darkness until recently spelled gloom and tension. Villagers would get to know only the next day if wild animals had taken away their goats in the darkness that would envelop this remote and almost inaccessible village after dusk.

Kasai was the first village to be electrified using a biomass gasifier six months ago—the project was officially inaugurated only at the end of October. It was one of the villages that was identified as having no chance of getting electricity before 2012. But Kasai is now in the throes of change—every home is lit up by two bulbs and the only two lanes in the village have nine streetlights on at night. This ensures that there is life almost till midnight in Kasai. “Chain se roti khate hain aur gappe ladate hain,” says the middle-aged Chhotelal.

Zirga Dahikar, husband of the village sarpanch, says: “Let the marriage season come and we will dance the whole night. Now the light is at our beck and call.”

The Ministry of Non-conventional Energy and Resources spent 90 per cent of the total expenditure of Rs 20 lakh and the Madhya Pradesh Government the rest. An Urja Vikas Samiti comprising villagers and a forest official as secretary will run the project.

Villagers were reluctant to shell out more than Rs 70 per month towards electricity charges and maintenance at first but they no longer mind it. They now get electricity for five to six hours a day.

And now that they have seen how beneficial electricity is, they want other facilities fast. “Bijli to aayee, ab road chahiye. Ek baar paani bhi mil jaye to paisa kaise bhi kama lenge,” Bhakal Jamunkar says.