People And Their Problems

New Delhi, 5 October 2007

Biomass Energy

VILLAGERS’ HOPE TO POWER SUPPLY

By Radhakrishna Rao

Today 56 per cent of India’s 700-million rural residents lack an adequate power supply. More than 1,00,000 villages in the country are not connected to the central power grid.  This dismal state of affairs is after 60 years of Independence. What should be done to give the rural poor a better life, is a question which needs to be addressed by the powers that be.  

A section of developmental experts in the country provide an answer. They propose a comprehensive law covering renewable sector in line with a similar law in force in Germany and China. In a major initiative towards giving a boost to the renewable energy sector, Pune-based World Institute of Sustainable Energy (WISE) has come out with a draft law which seeks to increase the target of electricity generation for renewables to 10 per cent by 2010 and to 20 per cent by 2020 of the total electricity produced in the country. With a view to achieve the goal of energy independence, the WISE draft has suggested technology missions on solar, bio-fuel and hydrogen energy sources.

So far technological innovations and cost efficiency are contributing to the steady growth of biomass energy here. According to the experts, while it costs about Rs 350-400 million to generate one MW of power through the solar photovoltaic route, it costs about Rs. 45 million for the same through wind energy. However, coal thermal energy system costs Rs 38 million to generate one MW and if it is the path of biomass gasification it would cost less than Rs 30 million to generate the same amount.

Therefore, decentralized biomass gasification plants are being considered as an ideal solution to meet the growing energy needs of villages, which boast of sufficient quantity of biomass in the form of agricultural residue. Moreover, the biomass gasification route to generate energy is considered an environmentally sound and economical viable option.

“India produces an estimated 600-million tones of agricultural residue every year. If all of this waste is gasified, it can produce 79,000-MW of power—about 63 per cent of the total power available in the country,” says Anil K Rajvanshi, of the non-profit Nimbalkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan, Maharastra. The power availability from biomass is dependent on the consistent availability of the high quality feedstock require to run the biomass power plant, he adds.

Asia’s first community-based biomass gasifier power plant at Kabbigere village, about 30 km from Tumkur town in Karnataka, is contributing 0.5 MW of power to the Central power grid to ensure round-the-clock uninterrupted power  supply to Kabbigere, Chikkamannahalli, Chikkarasanhalli, Ajjenahalli and Obenahalli villages for both irrigation and domestic use. This pilot project has been funded by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), India-Canada Environmental Facility (ICEF) as well as the Central and State Government.

The technology being used here was developed and perfected by the Advanced Bio-residue Energy Technologies Society (ABETS) promoted by the Combustion, Gasification and Propulsion Laboratory (CGPL) of the Department of Aerospace Engineering of Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science (IISc). According to CGPL Prof P J Paul, who is closely associated with ABETS, “Our technology package known as open top re-burn downdraft biomass gasification generates gas from a range of biomass that comprises forest residue, agricultural residue, woodchips and bagasse”.

In a significant development aimed at giving a commercial edge to the biomass gasification technology, Cummins India Ltd and IISc have entered into an agreement for commercialization of biomass gasification power generation system. The two institutions will jointly pursue the work on integrated development and the release of power generation systems based on the open  top re-burn downdraft biomass gasification system developed by ABETS.

As envisaged now, the two will jointly launch a range of biomass generation sets—anything between 2.5- KV to multiple unit power plants of over 1.5-MW. As pointed out by Ram Praveen Swaminathan, Vice-President, Power Generation Business, Cummins India, “We are committed to developing power generation technologies based on lower cost and sustainable feedstock. This initiative promises a significant life cycle cost advantage over hydrocarbon fuels and also enables us to develop sustainable energy systems”.

Meanwhile, the Cuban fishing hamlet of Cocodrilo known for its scenic tourist attractions has gone in  for ABETS  biomass energy technology to put an end to its heavy and continuing dependence on costly and environmentally unfriendly diesel-run power generators. Dr S Dasappa of IISC who had played a key role in developing the “clean biomass combustion technology”, says the Cuban   village will now be able to generate producer gas from a resource that is “available in abundance in the island”. The gasifier can be fed with just about any type of biomass—from the agricultural residue to wood chips and forest residues” he adds. 

Elaborating, Dasappa says, “Once the biomass is fed into the reactor, it is converted into a gaseous fuel. The fuel if cooled and cleaned with water and ash filtered off by a filtering system to make it suitable for the engine. The water is not wasted; it is treated and reused. The exhaust from the engine goes right back into the system to dry the biomass and complete the cycle”.

Invariably Cocodrilo will “showcase” this technology package that will be ultimately replicated in the rest of the island. As things stand today, the island nation of Cuba hopes to generate 3.5 MW power though this innovative biomass gasification system of Indian origin.

Nearer home, about 48 villages inhabited by  1,20,000 people in the  agriculturally prosperous Mandya district of Karnataka, gets electricity from a 4.5-MW biomass based power plant situated at Kirugavalu village. This plant counted among the largest biomass-based power reactors in India makes of agricultural wastes such as sugarcane refuse and coconut fronds available aplenty in the villages of the district. Rustics sell such waste to Malavalli Power Plant Private Ltd (MPPL) which is responsible for the plant operations and power supply.

“We have established a supply chain to procure farm wastes from villages within a radius of 10 kms and transport them to the plant. This is very essential to keep the plant running year-round without any disruption in feedstock supply and power generation,” says a spokesman of MPPL. He elaborates that the plant consumes over 100-tonnes of biomass a day. The biomass waste is chipped up and fed into the boilers of the plant for combustion. The steam produced from the heat is used to drive the turbine to generate electricity.

Clearly and apparently, energy experts’ familiar with the rural Indian energy scenario point out that power generation through the route of biomass gasification is the best option for village communities to get uninterrupted power supply in both a cost efficient and environmentally sustainable manner. --INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

People And Their Problems

New Delhi, 21 September 2007

India’s Growth Story

FAMILY PLANNING MUST

By Dhurajati Mukherjee

In a world where high growth and competitiveness has become the order of the day, scarcity of resources, made worse by governance problems and rising population have retarded the development process in India.

The vicious circle of poverty, population explosion and environmental degradation has added to the country’s woes. If the population remains uncontrolled, it would be disastrous for the country’s economy. The growth rate of the economy, which has reached respectable levels in the last two years, may get diluted if the population increase is not stabilized in the coming years.

India has 2.4 per cent of the landmass of the world but it has around 17 per cent of the population and this has been increasing at the rate of 1.9 per cent per annum while that of the world has been moving at 1.4 per cent per annum. It is estimated that there would be 9.2 billion people in the world by the year 2050. According to the UN Commission on Population and Development, India, Pakistan and China along with Indonesia and Nigeria are among five countries that account for almost half the annual growth of 100 million of the world’s population.

Among the developing countries, China has launched commendable and drastic family planning programmes over the last decade. It is estimated that its population will increase from the present 1250 million to approximately 1500 million in the year 2025. On the other hand, India’s record has been far from satisfactory and present indications reveal that the country’s population will cross that of China in the first quarter of this century.

The reasons for India not attaining success in controlling population may be attributed to the following factors: One, backwardness, especially in the BIMARU states like Bihar, where the population growth is very high. Two, inadequate awareness generation and spread of literacy at the grass-root level in some of the remote areas of the country. Three, lack of a common civil code and the Government’s reluctance to impose this fearing backlash from the minority community.

Four, high levels of gender inequality and hardly any initiatives to make women conscious of the need for family planning. Five, superstitious beliefs prevalent among the illiterate and the rural poor (abortion and other birth control measures do not have divine sanction). Six, lack of initiative by the panchayats to spread and implement family planning rigorously.

More. The National Family Planning Health surveys found that women on an average gave birth to 0.7 more children than they actually wanted because of various factors, including non-availability of contraceptive services. In the high population growth States this gap is much higher.

Additionally, it was found that wherever women were socially disadvantaged because of their sex or lack of education and training or oppression or where the patriarchal system made them economically and socially dependent, population control became difficult and the birth rates were higher. On the other hand, the birth rate decreased if the women were educated and autonomy. 

Kerala is a case in point. Boasting of a very high literacy rate there has been a drastic decline in the population growth. Also in most of the North Eastern States, where women are professionally engaged the fertility rate is quite low. In fact, contraceptive application and its long-term impact should be aimed at men rather than women.

Clearly, India’s growth and economic performance may lose its momentum if family planning is not practiced by a majority of the people. Already our natural resources are getting depleted thanks to a population density of around 320 per sq. km. (compared to around 135 per sq. km of China) and it would be virtually impossible for the country to make its presence felt in the international scene if the population growth cannot be controlled.

Moreover, not only would it be difficult to curb food insecurity but also our socio-economic advancement would be jeopardized if the population growth rate is not brought down to around one or 1.25 per cent per annum. As it stands, the foodgrains output growth has lost the race against population increase. True, the scarcity of water resources, the per capita availability of land and the depleting fossil fuels is a world wide trend however, populous countries like India would have to be more cautious in the coming years.

It is encouraging to note that the social infrastructure development with emphasis on health and education has already been initiated. There is an urgent need to inculcate family planning education in a massive way, especially in the states of Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and eastern Uttar Pradesh. Needless to say, education is a powerful weapon to combat increase in fertility rate, poverty and unemployment. The panchayats need to be involved and well known personalities from all religious communities have to be mobilized to lead this family planning campaign.

If education spreads among women and the underprivileged sections, the fertility rate would go down as has been the experience in the Third World. There is need to marshaled public-private partnerships to create awareness among the people and their participation in the family planning programme. And simultaneous uplift the condition of the people at the grassroot level through spreading education in the rural areas.

Besides, the Government needs to lay emphasis on infrastructure development like construction of roads, highways and initiatives in the power sector could lead to a transformation of the neglected and impoverished rural scenario. This could help reduce population growth.

In the ultimate analysis, the people need to be educated on the dire consequences of an over populated nation. This would only create problems in the future. Especially in a country with scarce resources and acute poverty. If the southern states of the country can achieve low population growth, why not their northern counterparts? Superstitious beliefs and fundamentalist attitude to life should give way to modern outlook and living. --- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

New Delhi, 14 September 2007

Air Pollution

GREAT DANGER TO LIFE

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

The human impact on the environment world-wide has indeed been disastrous. In fact, the environmental problems have accentuated since the 90s thanks to the western-induced strategy of development and consumerist approach to life and living. This has resulted in between one-third and one-half of the land surface being altered by human activities, leading to the loss of biological and genetic diversity world wide.

Think. The concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere has increased nearly 30 per cent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Air pollution from cars and industrial establishments kills over half a million people annually in Third World cities while another 2.5 million people die from indoor pollution, mostly in rural areas. Global warming due to toxic gases has increased phenomenally and is slated to increase further in the coming years. The rapid decline in forests at an alarming pace has resulted in various problems affecting the atmosphere and the environment.

At the present juncture, most Indians are exposed to dangerous levels of highly toxic gases, including carcinogenic organic compounds, sulphur and its fumes through the air they breathe. The levels of air-borne suspended particulate matter recorded in the large metro cities, especially Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai far exceeded the air quality standards adopted by the country and other developing countries.

A few years ago, two independent analyses estimated that urban air pollution in the country could be responsible for about 40,000 premature deaths annually primarily due to human exposure to elevated levels of particulate matter. Not only that. The Community Environment Monitoring (CEM) report titled ‘Smokescreen Ambient Air Quality in India’ (released in June 2006) found that the country is “pathetically behind in terms of infrastructure to safeguard its environment or health of people from air pollution”.

Shockingly, the report pointed out that India’s air pollution monitoring is primitive and the world’s fourth largest economy has no standards for most of the toxic and commonly found air pollutants. Worse, the air in the country is unfit to breathe.

The study observed that compared to 1997, the carbon monoxide levels were down by 32 per cent and the sulphur dioxide levels by 39 per cent. While the change has been remarkable, it has lulled regulators into complacency. The air has never been monitored for toxic gases and has therefore never been regulated for the same, the report pointed out with special reference to Delhi.

Automobile emissions of particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen and sulphur account for more than 60 per cent of the air pollution load in our cities. In fact, auto mobilization in the country has led to critical SPM levels, exceeding one-and-a-half times of the permissible standard in the 57 per cent of monitored Indian cities. So pervasive is the phenomenon that even smaller cities have become its victim. India’s top ten hotspots include Raipur, Kanpur, Alwar and Indore not to mention the congested metropolises.

Recently a comparative study of the air pollution levels in 17 cities undertaken by Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) found respirable suspended particulate matter (RSPM) and suspended particulate matter (SPM) levels above the national standards. In these cities, the number of vehicles has increased by about 4 per cent since 2000.

Delhi, the first city to implement the clean air initiatives, still has critical levels of RSPM and SPM in the residential areas. The SPM level has hovered around 333 ug/ms since 2000 when the number of vehicles in the Capital were around 30 lakhs. Obviously, the 15 lakh new vehicles that have been added to the Capital’s roads have to shoulder the blame for the current state of affairs. Moreover, a jump in the registration of diesel vehicles has led to an increase in the level of nitrogen oxide in 2006 to even higher than the pre-1995 era, when pollutants had chocked Delhi.

The study indicates the disturbing times ahead for India’s economic capital, Mumbai where the RSPM level has again shown an upward trend since 2003, taking the pollution level above the national standard of 60 ug/m3. In Agra, Lucknow and Kolkata the particulate matter has witnessed a slight upward trend.

The situation is particularly quite bad in Kolkata with the RSPM 1.5 times the national standard because of inadequate road space, thanks to poor maintenance and the entry of innumerable highly pollutant commercial vehicles inside the city. In fact, automobiles alone contribute 30 per cent to the city’s air pollution load.  

While the CPCB study admits that the increasing number of vehicles is the new challenge for acceleration of the air pollution, environmental groups such as the Centre for Science & Environment (CSE) attribute the reason to rampant violation of pollution standards, which are not enforced by the regulatory authorities.

Commissioned to study the impact of the Supreme Court’s direction to the Government to implement pollution abatement programmes since 1995, the CPCB has urged the Government to prepare action plans regarding restricting the entry of commercial vehicles (and even inter-state buses) into cities, phasing out of in-use vehicles, encouraging alternative fuels and giving incentives for clean air technologies.    

Apart from this, indoor air pollution, resulting from chulhas burning wood, coal and animal dung as fuel has been another big problem. It claims 5 lakh lives in India every year, most of whom are women and children. Burning solid fuels emit carbon monoxide, particulates, benzene and formaldehyde, which can result in pneumonia, asthma, blindness, lung cancer, TB and low birth weight.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) India accounts for 80 per cent of the 600, 000 premature deaths that occur in South-East Asia annually due to exposure to indoor air pollution. Nearly 70 per cent of the rural households do not even have proper ventilation!

The WHO programme has planned smokeless chulhas or liquid cooking gas cylinders for the rural poor. Nearly $ 650 million would be needed to change the way most of the world cooks. A simple mechanism promoting such chulhas and improving the ventilation can reduce the incidents of indoor pollution deaths by half. The WHO goal is to achieve this by 2015. However, so far it has managed only to raise just 10 per cent of the necessary funds. A lot more needs to be done in this regard.

Air pollution has affected a significant section of the population, especially those living in slums, squatter settlements and pavements. The increase in cardio-vascular and other diseases, including asthma, bronchitis and even lung cancer, has witnessed a significant rise.

As is well known, the oxides of sulphur and nitrogen cause breathing problems while carbon monoxide hampers oxygen transport in the body. In the lungs, oxygen gets attached to the haemoglobin present in the blood. When carbon monoxide is inhaled, it combines with haemoglobin to form carboxyhaemoglobin. As a result, less haemoglobin is available for transporting oxygen. This causes headaches and, in extreme cases, death.

In sum, controlling the air quality is thus imperative. More rigid regulatory standards need to be maintained and the CPCB should join hands with the State Pollution Control Boards (SPCBs) to ensure that air quality is closely monitored and fines imposed on all agencies and individuals for violating the rules and environmental standards.

In the urban centres, more efficient and non-polluting public transport as also non-mechanized modes have to be promoted. If Paris can have 200 km of bicycle paths with 250,000 people using them, so can Delhi, Mumbai or Kolkata. However, in the rural areas, there is need to promote smokeless chulhas for which the Government should come out with a subsidy scheme and also ensure that each house should have some form of ventilation. ---- INFA

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

People and Their Problems

New Delhi, 7 September 2007

Healing Touch From Space

TELE-MEDICINE BOON FOR RURAL AREAS

By Radhakrishna Rao

Tele-medicine is an important initiative of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) to use space technology for societal benefits. The organisation which has been instrumental in popularizing the tele-medicine network in the country, has unveiled a new plan to develop and launch a dedicated health care satellite which would help expand the tele-medicine services in the country in a big way. In fact, ISRO has given an impetus to its tele-medicine project by making available relevant technology and bandwidth capacity onboard the INSAT domestic communications spacecraft.

While ISRO provides the tele-medicine systems, which include the software, hardware and communications equipment as well as the satellite bandwidth, the State Governments and specialty hospitals have to allocate funds for their part of infrastructure, manpower and maintenance. Technology development standards and cost effective systems have also been evolved in association with various State Governments, NGOs and the health industry.

Presently, there are 186 hospitals in the tele-medicine network including 152 in the remote and rural areas and 34 super specialty hospitals in major town. Further, ISRO also supports the tele-medicine national grid activities through the task force formed by the Directorate of Health Services. Appropriately, tele-medicine has been described as “a healing touch from space”.

Incidentally, the Indian tele-medicine network is an indigenous enterprise with Indian built spacecraft systems and computer software engineered by experts playing a key role in it. The tele-medicine system involving the use of IT (Information Technology), satellite systems and communications technology enables the transmission of medical images and health care data of a patient to an expert at a super specialty hospital to facilitate timely diagnosis and early treatment. In this way, the disorder of a patient in a remote rural area can easily be diagnosed and an appropriate treatment course prescribed on time.

Significantly, the tele-medicine initiative launched by ISRO way back in 2001 took off with a pilot project linking Apollo hospital, Chennai with the Apollo hospital in Aragonda village in Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh. This was followed by the linking of the Bangalore-based super specialty cardiac care centre Narayana Hrudyalaya with Chamarajanagara District hospital in Karnataka. Similarly, a tele-medicine network put in place moments after the killer earthquake hit parts of Gujarat in early 2001 helped save many lives.

When the killer tsunami waves battered the islands of Andaman and Nicobar in the Bay of Bengal in December 2004, the tele-medicine network operated by the INS Dhanvantri Naval Hospital and the G.B.Pant Hospital at Port Blair and the Bishop Richardson Hospital at Car Nicobar were pressed into service and used extensively for consultation and treatment.

Further, a temporary tele-medicine facility at Pamba in the foothills of the popular pilgrim centre of Sabarimalai in the Western Ghats stretches of southern Kerala caters to the needs of millions of pilgrims visiting this holy seat during the peak season stretching from November to January. The Chennai-based Shankara Nethralaya and the Madurai based Aravind Eye Hospital too are making use of the mobile tele-medicine facility to provide eye care services to the people in the remote and rural areas of Tamil Nadu.

The integrated tele-cardiology and tele-health project launched by the Kolkatta-based Asia Heart Foundation (AHF) has hubs at Narayana Hrudayalaya and the Rabindranath Tagore International Cardiac Care Centre at Kolkatta.The AHF has also initiated tele-medicine projects in Pakistan and Malaysia. On the other hand, the Narayana Hrudayalaya operates tele-medicine centres in many of the African countries.

In a significant development the Oman-based medical centre of the Apollo Group of hospitals has been linked to the Apollo tele-medicine network with a view to facilitate the Oman centre to have an easy access to ‘high end  expertise” available in the Apollo hospitals to cater to the medical needs of the people of Oman. Apart from video consultation, the Indian specialists would be able to review a patient’s investigation in Oman and give their opinion to the doctors attending on the patients. Besides, tele-medicine could also be used for taking a second opinion from the experienced Indian doctors in complex clinical situations.

Nearer home, the New Delhi-based Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) as part of its commitment to provide specialized health care services to rural communities has set up a tele-medicine network which facilitates many community health centres in Haryana and Rajasthan to access the hospital’s super-specialty medical expertise. Inaugurating the tele-medicine project, the Minister of Science and Technology Kapil Sibal, asserted, “It aims to provide quality health care, early diagnosis and tertiary consultation from SGRH to medical kiosks established in village hospitals”.

Importantly, an impact study conducted on 1000 patients has revealed that there is significant cost saving involved in using a tele-medicine network. According to the Chairman of ISRO G.Madhavan Nair, “we have reduced the hardware transmission costs by 25 per cent in less than three years. It is a good opportunity to reach space applications to the community and extend it to mobile vans, dedicated terminals and tele-medicine trained doctors.” He also revealed that tele-medicine has exposed doctors serving in rural areas of the country to many novel technologies being introduced in the super specialty hospitals located in the urban centres.

Clearly, tele-medicine a concept whose time has come is a boon for a vast majority of the rural population which has virtually little access to health care facilities and finds it difficult to travel to urban centres for medical treatment.  Even as hospitals, clinics and super specialty centres are expanding at a rapid pace in the urban centres, for an average Indian villager, getting timely, proper and cost effective medical treatment is an expensive proposition. Thus, the expansion of tele-medicine services could go a long way towards filling a vital gap in the country’s rural health care services. ---- INFA

(Copyright India News and Feature Alliance)