This is how poverty in rural India came down

 A recent World Bank Report has shown that extreme poverty in India more than halved between 2011 and 2019 – from 22.5 per cent to 10.2 per cent. The reduction was higher in rural areas, from 26.3 per cent to 11.6 per cent. The rate of poverty decline between 2015 and 2019 was faster compared to 2011-2015.

In an earlier article (‘A greater ease of living,’ IE, November 20, 2019), I had argued that poverty has reduced significantly because of the current government’s thrust on improving the ease of living of ordinary Indians through schemes such as the Ujjwala Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, Swachh Bharat Mission, Jan Dhan and Mission Indradhanush in addition to the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana-National Rural Livelihood Mission and improved coverage under the National Food Security Act. While debates on the World Bank’s methodology continue to rage, it is important to understand how poverty in rural areas was reduced at a faster pace. Much of the success can be credited to all government departments, especially their janbhagidari-based thrust on pro-poor public welfare that ensured social support for the endeavour. It will nevertheless be useful to delineate the key factors that contributed to the success. First, the identification of deprived households on the basis of the Socioeconomic and Caste Census (SECC) 2011 across welfare programmes helped in creating a constituency for the well-being of the poor, irrespective of caste, creed or religion. The much-delayed SECC 2011 data was released in July 2015. This was critical in accomplishing the objectives of “Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas”. Since deprivation was the key criterion in identifying beneficiaries, SC and ST communities got higher coverage and the erstwhile backward regions in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, Rajasthan and rural Maharashtra got a larger share of the benefits. This was a game-changer in the efforts to ensure balanced development, socially as well as across regions. Social groups that often used to be left out of government programmes were included and gram sabha validation was taken to ensure that the project reached these groups.

Second, the coverage of women under the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana and Self Help Groups (SHG) increased from 2.5 crore in 2014 to over 8 crore in 2018 as a result of more than 75 lakh SHGs working closely with over 31 lakh elected panchayati raj representatives, 40 per cent of whom are women. This provided a robust framework to connect with communities and created a social capital that helped every programme. The PRI-SHG partnership catalysed changes that increased the pace of poverty reduction and the use of Aadhaar cleaned up corruption at several levels and ensured that the funds reached those whom it was meant for.

Third, Finance Commission transfers were made directly to gram panchayats leading to the creation of basic infrastructure like pucca village roads and drains at a much faster pace in rural areas. The high speed of road construction under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadhak Yojana created greater opportunities for employment in nearby larger villages/census towns/kasbas by improving connectivity and enhancing mobility.

Fourth, the social capital of SHGs ensured the availability of credit through banks, micro-finance institutions and MUDRA loans. The NRLM prioritised livelihood diversification and implemented detailed plans for credit disbursement. New businesses, both farm and non-farm livelihoods, were taken up by women’s collectives on a large scale with community resource persons playing crucial handholding roles, especially with respect to skill development. Fifth, in the two phases of the Gram Swaraj Abhiyan in 2018, benefits such as gas and electricity connections, LED bulbs, accident insurance, life insurance, bank accounts and immunisation were provided to 6,3974 villages that were selected because of their high SC and ST populations. The implementation of these schemes was monitored assiduously. The performance of line departments went up manifold due to community-led action. The gains are reflected in the findings of the National Family Health Survey V, 2019-2021.

Sixth, the thrust on universal coverage for individual household latrines, LPG connections and pucca houses for those who lived in kuccha houses ensured that no one was left behind. This created the Labarthi Varg. Seventh, this was also a period in which a high amount of public funds were transferred to rural areas, including from the share of states and, in some programmes, through extra-budgetary resources.

Eighth, the thrust on a people’s plan campaign, “Sabki Yojana Sabka Vikas” for preparing the Gram Panchayat Development Plans and for ranking villages and panchayats on human development, economic activity and infrastructure, from 2017-18 onwards, laid the foundation for robust community participation involving panchayats and SHGs, especially in ensuring accountability.

Ninth, through processes like social and concurrent audits, efforts were made to ensure that resources were fully utilised. Several changes were brought about in programmes like the MGNREGS to create durable and productive assets. This helped marginal and small farmers in improving their homesteads, and diversifying livelihoods.

Tenth, the competition among states to improve performance on rural development helped. Irrespective of the party in power, nearly all states and UTs focussed on improving livelihood diversification in rural areas and on improving infrastructure significantly.

All these factors contributed to improved ease of living of deprived households and improving their asset base. A lot has been achieved, much remains to be done. The pandemic and the negative terms of trade shock from the Ukraine crisis pose challenges to the gains made in poverty reduction up to 2019.

Written by Amarjeet Sinha

Source: Indian Express, 9/05/22

In rural India, over-reliance on digital technology has worsen financial exclusion

 

A technological intervention must have a governance framework in which protection of rights must be fundamental and which provides more choices to the marginalised.

Remember the early days of the internet, when it took several minutes to connect to the web through a dial-in modem? Or when you had to wait in line at an STD booth to make an outstation call? Since then, we have made massive strides in digital technologies. Improvements in internet banking mean that a buffet of products are available at the fingertips of consumers. But imagine if one had to travel miles and wait for several hours to make one banking transaction. This is a reality for the vast majority of the rural populace. In rural India, an over-reliance on digital technology alone has widened the distance between the rights holder and their entitlements. This is exemplified in the pursuit of financial inclusion.

The Direct Benefits Transfer (DBT) initiative is a technology induced step in improving financial inclusion among other stated goals. Although DBT has been operational since 2011, it has become synonymous with the Aadhaar Payments Bridge Systems (APBS) since 2015.

Various government programmes such as maternity entitlements, student scholarships, wages for MGNREGA workers fall under the DBT initiative where money is transferred to the bank accounts of the respective beneficiaries. But the beneficiaries face many hurdles in accessing their money. These are referred to as “last mile challenges”. To deal with these, banking kiosks known as Customer Service Points (CSP) and Banking Correspondents (BC) were promoted. These are private individuals who offer banking services through the Aadhaar Enabled Payment Systems (AePS). Subject to network connectivity and electricity, beneficiaries can perform basic banking transactions such as small deposits and withdrawals at these kiosks.

While there are some merits of online payments, the process of transition from older systems and the APBS technology itself needs more scrutiny. Workers have little clue about where their wages have been credited and what to do when their payments get rejected, often due to technical reasons such as incorrect account numbers and incorrect Aadhaar mapping with bank accounts. While some attention is being paid by some state governments in resolving rejected payments for MGNREGA, the lack of any accountability for APBS and AePS and absence of grievance redressal would continue to impact all DBT programmes.

More importantly, the workers/beneficiaries have rarely been consulted regarding their preferred mode of transacting. Lack of adequate checks and balances, absence of any accountability framework for payment intermediaries and a hurried rollout of this technical juggernaut have put the already vulnerable at higher risk of being duped. This has created new forms of corruption as has been recently evidenced in the massive scholarship scam in Jharkhand, where many poor students were deprived of their scholarships owing to a nexus of middlemen, government officials, banking correspondents and others. These exclusions are digitally induced.

To understand some-last mile challenges, LibTech India recently released a research report based on a survey of nearly 2,000 MGNREGA workers across Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Rajasthan. The survey attempted to understand experiences of workers in obtaining wages in hand after they were credited to their bank accounts. Rural banks are short-staffed and tend to get overcrowded. Forty-two per cent of people in Jharkhand and 38 per cent in Rajasthan took more than four hours to access wages from banks. This was just 2 per cent in AP. Overall, an estimated 45 per cent had to make multiple visits to the bank for their last transaction.

CSP/BCs appeared to be a convenient alternative to banks due to their proximity. However, an estimated 40 per cent of them had to make multiple visits to withdraw from CSPs/BCs due to biometric failures. In general, for MGNREGA workers, a visit to the disbursement agency implies that they don’t get to do that day’s work and therefore lose that day’s wages. The average travel cost for one visit to a bank in Jharkhand is Rs 50 which becomes Rs 100 for two bank visits. Adding the lost daily minimum wages (at Rs 171) for two visit days, it becomes Rs 342 and adding a modest Rs 25 for food, this becomes Rs 392. Effectively, a worker in Jharkhand has to spend more than a third of her weekly wages just to withdraw her weekly wages.

The only way for rural bank users to keep track of their finances is through their bank passbooks. However, more than two-thirds of time workers were denied the facility to update their passbooks at banks. Some workers get charged (45 per cent in Jharkhand) for transacting at CSPs/BCs which is meant to be free.

There are just 14.6 bank branches per 1 lakh adults in India. This is sparser in rural India. Despite hardships of access, most workers preferred to transact at the banks. Using bank branch data, Robin Burgess and Rohini Pande demonstrated that branch expansion into rural unbanked locations significantly reduced poverty. With technological advances, the costs of running rural banks will also be lower. When the outcome is a significant reduction in poverty, additional infrastructure costs should be imperative from a policy perspective.

While we await the days when rights of the marginalised attain primacy over technological quick fixes, returning to basics might prove valuable. This would minimally entail understanding that the right to work also includes the right to access your own money in a timely and transparent manner. These rights must be protected through strengthening grievance redressal processes and setting accountability norms for all payment intermediaries. A technological intervention must have a governance framework in which protection of rights must be fundamental and which provides more choices to the marginalised.

Written by Rajendran Narayanan 

Source: Indian Express, 6/01/21

From plate to plough: Rural change challenge

Inclusive agricultural growth is key to removing poverty by 2030.

Eradicating poverty from the planet was the top-most target in a set of 17 goals adopted by the UN last September as a part of its sustainable development agenda. Nations across the globe, including India, endorsed it. The strategies to achieve this goal have been left open to countries. In this context, the Rural Development Report (RDR) 2016 of the International Fund for Agricultural Development is timely.

The RDR’s Asia and Pacific Region (APR) release will be in India on October 17. The report is among the more comprehensive documents that try to understand the role of rural transformation in eradicating poverty and securing food and nutritional security within the context of economy-wide structural transformation in several countries. It is based on an empirical analysis of 60 countries drawn from various regions.

Nine are from the APR. Comprising Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Pakistan, Philippines and Vietnam, the region is the most populous and has the largest number of poor on this planet. There are 16 countries from Latin America and the Caribbean; seven from the Near East, North Africa, Europe and Central Asia; 15 from East and Southern Africa; and 13 from West and Central Africa.

RDR 2016’s first lesson pertains to the conceptual framework of development. It notes that economies of almost all the 60 countries are undergoing some sort of structural transformation — some are moving fast, many are moving at a moderate pace and some are going very slow. The transformation is reflected in rising productivities in agriculture and the urban economy as well as in the changing character of the economy — the preponderance of agriculture making way for the dominance of industry and services, greater integration with global trade and investments and growing urbanisation.

RDR’s second lesson is that rural areas cannot remain insulated from this economy-wide change. They are also transformed with rising agricultural productivity, increasing commercialisation and marketable surpluses, diversification to high-value agriculture and off-farm employment through the development of agri-value chains.

The third, and the most important lesson, especially for policymakers, is that rural transformation on its own may not be effective in reducing poverty unless it is inclusive. This challenge is at the heart of the report. Agricultural development is a key element of such inclusiveness since a majority of the working force in most countries at low to moderate levels of rural transformation is still engaged in agriculture.

What can India learn from this, given that agriculture still engages half of its workforce, and about 85 per cent of its farms are small and marginal (less than two hectares)? Compared to China and Vietnam, which have experienced fast structural and rural transformation, India’s story is of slow transformation. As a result, poverty reduction in India was at a much slower pace during 1988-2014, compared to China and Vietnam. The RDR 2016 tells us that India’s poverty reduction was slow during 1988-2005, but during 2005-12, it accelerated dramatically — almost three times faster than during the earlier period.

What did India do during this period? Research reveals that the relative price scenario changed significantly (by more than 50 per cent) in favour of agriculture in the wake of rising global prices. This boosted private investments in agriculture by more than 50 per cent. As a result, agri-GDP growth touched 4.1per cent during 2007-12, as against 2.4 per cent during 2002-07. The net surplus of agri-trade touched $25 billion in 2013-14; real farm wages rose by seven per cent per annum. All these led to an unprecedented fall in poverty. A good price incentive can thus trigger investments in agriculture, leading to productivity gains, increases in real farm wages and fall in poverty.

To make the rural transformation more inclusive, India will have to focus on raising productivity in agriculture through higher R&D (seeds) and irrigation and build value chains for high value agri-products like livestock and horticulture, which account for more than half the value of agriculture (cereals account for less than 20 per cent). In the building of these value chains by mainstream small holders — say, through farmer producer companies — India can create large off-farm rural employment and augment incomes of farmers and others living in rural areas. This would require large investments both by the private and public sector. If India can do all this efficiently and through a participatory mode, it can certainly hope to eliminate not only poverty but also malnutrition by 2030. For more details on RDR 2016, stay tuned till October 17.

The writer is Infosys Chair Professor for Agriculture at ICRIER

Source: Indian Express, 10-10-2016

Providing transparency in rural electrification

The GARV app puts pressure on State governments for timely and quality delivery

“I am going to turn everything into an app and I am going to allow people to monitor daily what work we are doing, what work States are doing” — Piyush Goyal, March 23, 2016 at the Power Focus Summit

Rural electrification has been an enduring challenge for successive governments. Given India’s federal structure, States provide last-mile connectivity which includes providing access to and distributing electricity, and maintaining infrastructure, while the Central government provides policy and financial support.

However, un-electrified villages present an enormous challenge as they are often located in inaccessible or left-wing extremism-affected areas. Over the last three years, there has been a rapid decline in the pace of rural electrification to only 5,189 villages. Several States, particularly in eastern India, have seen even lower levels of electrification. For instance, in these three years, Uttar Pradesh electrified just 64 villages against the 1,518 that were sanctioned while Bihar electrified only 1,248 villages against the 9,246 that were sanctioned. The slow pace meant that this task would require more than a decade. Due to such tardy performance in the States, the National Democratic Alliance government launched the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY) to ensure rapid electrification, feeder separation, and strengthening of rural distribution infrastructure. It is necessary to monitor progress intensively for smooth and fast implementation of electrification.

On August 15, 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that all the remaining villages would be electrified within 1,000 days. Based on Census 2011, States had provided a list of 18,452 un-electrified villages as on April 1, 2015. To transparently monitor the process, the Central government, in November 2015, appointed 309 young and passionate Grameen Vidyut Abhiyantas (GVAs or rural electrification engineers) from the same areas. Reports by these GVAs are shared through the GARV (Grameen Vidyutikaran) app (http://garv.gov.in) with officials as well as the public. It puts pressure on State governments for timely and quality delivery.

Transparent monitoring system

Transparency in rural electrification brought to fore a number of issues which were traditionally swept under the rug. Villages are electrified as per the old 10 per cent household connectivity criterion, but the Central government aims at connecting 100 per cent households of the 18,452 villages. Habitations with less than 100 people (Dhanis, Majalas, Tolas, etc.) outside revenue villages were not even included earlier, but are now electrified. Prior to GVAs, only data provided by the States was available, which in many cases does not represent ground reality. GVAs provide a verification mechanism in a bold, transparent, and reliable manner. We are delighted that the media is taking an interest in tracking rural electrification.

On December 10, 2015, media reports highlighted discrepancies in some State data and it was decided that post January 1, 2016, GVA verification would be mandatory for electrified villages so that States provide accurate data. Thus GVAs have the huge task of verifying all the old data generated by the State governments since April 1, 2015, and public and media participation was solicited for scrutiny. This will ensure highest degree of probity and accountability in the system.

Articles on rural electrification published in The Hindu on March 26 (“On paper, electrified villages — in reality, darkness” and “Here, the light goes out of their lives at sunset”) fulfil this very purpose and are a step towards bringing accountability. Though these articles aim to highlight certain shortcomings in rural electrification, they are themselves outcomes of a transparent monitoring system adopted by the Centre.

Analysing specific cases

Let’s look at specific cases. Haldu Khata in Uttar Pradesh was declared electrified by the U.P. government on November 6, 2015 but during a visit by GVAs on Jan 1, 2016, no works of grid extension were found in the village. As an interim arrangement, the village stands electrified with solar power. Dimatala in Assam was declared electrified by the State on September 27, 2015 and was confirmed by GVAs. But on January 18, 2016, a visit of GVAs found that the distribution transformer was damaged. The State was directed to take corrective action. Kadam Jheriya in Chhattisgarh was declared electrified by the State on October 9, 2015 and was confirmed by GVAs. Pagara Buzurg in Madhya Pradesh was declared electrified on September 28, 2015 and was confirmed through a GVA visit. However, a GVA visit on March 22, 2016 revealed that existing infrastructure has been stolen; this remains the responsibility of the State. Panalomali, Kusadangar, Patyetapali in Odisha, and Sunwara in M.P. were declared electrified by the States on November 27, 2015; December 4, 2015; November 12, 2015; and September 28, 2015 respectively. GVAs have recorded these as uninhabited villages, but State governments have not declared them so. Birni in Jharkhand was declared electrified by the State on October 15, 2015. A GVA visit on March 23, 2016 confirmed that village works are complete, but line charging remains and is being expedited.

Additionally, 300 villages were declared electrified by State governments but not verified by GVAs. They were declared electrified before GVAs joined. GVAs are verifying all the villages and will complete the process by March 31, 2016.

The articles mention that 342 villages were marked as not electrified by GVAs but are shown as electrified. We are not sure how the figure has been arrived at by the reporter, but State governments’ data remains our primary reference complemented by field verification. There are indeed some villages such as Firozpur Darga, Fajalpur Habitat in U.P., and Bukanari in Bihar which were declared electrified on September 30, 2015 by U.P. and on September 29, 2015 by Bihar, but found un-electrified during GVA visits. State governments have been requested to reconfirm the basis of their data and take corrective action. The underlying focus remains transparency. If the purpose was to hide the status of the villages, even the “not electrified as per GVA” status will not show on the app.

The app itself highlights that 3,604 villages were found electrified during the survey by GVAs. Instead of the data first coming from States, GVAs directly captured the electrification data on the app with subsequent State government confirmation. These villages were electrified before deployment of GVAs.

Despite our commitment during meetings in the third week of March to provide precise field data after the Holi vacations, the reporter went ahead with the articles, making a case for State governments to improve data accuracy and quality.

Power Minister Piyush Goyal said on March 22: “I urge all to monitor the implementation of rural electrification carried out by States to support the efforts of the Central government to bring in transparency and ensure that proper quality is maintained and works are completed on time.” Also on multiple occasions, the Minister has asked the public and the media to scrutinise rural electrification work of States and ask for accountability. With enhanced funds, pro-people guidelines, constant monitoring and speedy delivery, Central government has embarked on a time-bound mission not only to electrify 18,452 villages much before the scheduled time but also to take it to the next level to provide connectivity to all the households in these villages and meet the ultimate goal of 24X7 power for all.

Dinesh Arora is the Executive Director of Rural Electrification Corporation.

Keywords: villages, GARV app, Grameen Vidyutikaran, rural electrification

Source: The Hindu, 30-03-2016

Going against the grain

For rural India to be vibrant, the way forward is to address the twin challenges of reviving the dynamism of the farm sector by building its climate resilience and creation of quality employment in non-farm segments.

Recent reports say India has become the world’s fastest-growing economy in terms of GDP growth, overtaking China. While this may be the case, we must pause and reflect over what this means for the 800 million-plus population that lives and works in our rural areas. The picture there is a lot less spectacular.

Between 2003 and 2012, there was a clear turnaround in our agricultural performance. But the rate of growth in agriculture and allied activities is down from about 4 per cent per annum in the 11th Plan period to just 1.7 per cent in the first three years of the 12th Plan (2012-15). Over 300,000 farmers have committed suicide in the last decade, and in Maharashtra alone, over 2,000 such cases have been reported last year. Worse, India is currently reeling under the impact of an unprecedented drought. For the second year in succession, rainfall in the monsoon season has been less than normal; 302 districts in the country have been declared drought-hit. Since agriculture is the source of livelihood for millions in rural India, droughts push the already precarious lives of smallholder farmers and agricultural labourers to the brink, leading to massive rural distress.

The changing rural economy

The World Bank’s World Development Report 2008 shows that agricultural growth is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty compared to growth originating in non-agricultural sectors. In India, too, 80 per cent of the people officially counted as poor lived in rural India in 2011-12. This means that for making a significant dent in poverty, rural incomes have to grow at a faster rate. The gap between urban and rural consumption levels has increased over the years. Recent studies have shown that despite the spurt in rural incomes between 2005 and 2012 caused by a rise in commodity prices and favourable terms of trade for agriculture, the level of non-farm incomes is at least three times that of farm incomes even today.

The rural economy in its current juncture is a lot less “agricultural” than it used to be earlier. With the fall in the average size of landholding, over 90 per cent of farmers are now in the small and marginal category and they cultivate over 50 per cent of the cropped area. Smallholder farmers are increasingly forced to combine non-farm work with work on their own land. Data from the 68th round of the National Sample Survey (2011-12) show that about 36 million workers have shifted from agriculture to non-agricultural sectors between 2004-05 and 2011-12, meaning that a major part of their income comes from work outside agriculture. On account of this inter-sectoral movement, the share of agriculture in the total workforce has fallen below the 50 per cent mark for the first time after Independence. While this number has been contested, the fact remains that sectors like rural construction are now the sites employing substantial numbers of workers. Given the poor working conditions in these sectors and the overall decline in quality of employment in the economy, this is likely to be the result of a swapping of low-income farm work for low-quality non-farm work, as many observers point out.

Hence, the huge challenge of employment generation needs to be addressed. As the Economic Survey 2014-15 shows, regardless of the data source used, employment growth (1.40 per cent) has lagged behind growth in the labour force (2.23 per cent) between 2001 and 2011. Clearly, employment elasticity of growth, showing the effectiveness of the economic system in generating employment, seems to have declined over time. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) has provided relief employment to around 5 crore rural households per year over the last decade. However, since 2012, both the number of households covered and the number of person days of employment generated under MGNREGA in the country as a whole has undergone a steep decline.

Public investment the key

For rural India to be vibrant, the way forward seems to be to simultaneously address the twin challenges of reviving the dynamism of the farm sector by building its climate resilience on the one hand and creation of quality employment in non-farm segments of the rural economy on the other.

Public investment holds the key to addressing the long-term structural constraints of the rural economy. Official land use statistics show that 55 per cent of cultivated area still has no access to irrigation. Variations in the pattern of seasonal rainfall themselves create extreme vulnerability in this rainfed segment of Indian agriculture. The experience of watershed projects over the last three decades has shown that local harvesting of monsoon run-off can be a good drought-mitigating mechanism as it provides supplemental irrigation to crops at crucial periods of plant growth. Investments under MGNREGA and watershed programmes need to be converged in this overall framework of drought-proofing rainfed agriculture. Since rainfed agriculture produces about 40 per cent of our foodgrain and a major share of pulses, millets and oilseeds, investments are urgently required from the point of view of food security.

Soil is another critical area where investments are needed. Due to poor organic matter incorporation, organic carbon in soil is below the required level in most parts of India. Indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers has further eroded soil health. Many methods of soil enrichment, including by recycling organic matter and converting “waste to wealth”, have been demonstrated on the ground by scientists as well as farmers. The task at hand is to scale up these for greater farmer uptake. This would also mean a reframing of the current fertilizer subsidy regime, which is heavily biased in favour of synthetic chemical fertilizers. Though there is a growing awareness about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides on environment and human beings, the fact still remains that chemical pesticide use has gone up over the years. The pesticides used in India are more harmful than those in many other parts of the world. There is an urgent need to promote alternative ways of pest management, such as non-pesticidal management (NPM) practices to eventually phase out the use of synthetic pesticides and make agriculture chemical-free.

Promoting crop diversity

Crop diversification is another big challenge. Even with changing consumption patterns, pulses are the main source of protein for the poor. They have a crucial place in the country’s food security architecture. Millets impart greater resilience to the cropping systems against climate risk in traditional millet-growing areas. Minimum Support Prices (MSPs) have been beyond the reach of most of the farmers growing pulses or millets, and there has been no system of public procurement of these crops. The recent experience of States like Madhya Pradesh is useful in organising decentralised procurement of pulses and millets in those rainfed States where they constitute a major share of the cropped area. Such procurement of local foodgrain, feeding into programmes providing supplementary nutrition like the Mid Day Meal Scheme (MDMS) and Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme, can be effective in reducing pervasive undernutrition among children, adolescent girls and pregnant women in India.

Agricultural research plays a crucial role in promoting diversified cropping systems. Currently, the public expenditure on agricultural research is only 0.7 per cent of the agricultural GDP. There is a strong case for raising this by at least three to four times. While doing so, attention must be paid to include crops like pulses and millets and attempt to develop climate-resilient cropping systems. Scientists and extension workers of the public-funded agricultural extension system have played a huge role in the agricultural transformation of the country. However, this system is virtually defunct in many parts of the country, especially in the rainfed tracts. Concentrated efforts are required to revive the agricultural extension system and build its capacities by both human resource as well as technical know-how. Organisations like the Agricultural Technology Management Agency (ATMA) and Krishi Vigyan Kendras need to be energised to become active agents of change in rural areas.

There is also the major challenge of employment generation to be addressed. Projecting the current trends of employment growth to the future, estimates show that the number of non-farm jobs to be created has to be at least thrice as much as the current growth rate of 5-6 million jobs per year. A significant number of these jobs will have to be created in the rural non-farm sector. Hence, we need to identify sectors within the rural economy which have high growth and employment generation potential and support them through a carefully worked out policy package. Sectors like agro-processing and value addition to agricultural produce offer huge scope for local employment and for greater control by the local producers over the value chain. Public investment in rural infrastructure is known to leverage substantial private investment and generate significant local employment multipliers. Available evidence shows that even as the overall rate of women’s labour force participation has declined, there has been high labour force participation of women from poorer households, especially in times of increasing agrarian distress. This underscores the need to revive MGNREGA, which has a proven track record of providing relief employment to a large number of rural women.

(P.S. Vijayshankar is founder-member, Samaj Pragati Sahayog, an NGO based in Madhya Pradesh.)

Keywords: rural India, GDP growth

Source: The Hindu, 5-02-2016

Rural landholding almost halved over 20 years

The average rural Indian household is a marginal landowner, growing mainly cereals on a small patch of land and reliant on groundwater for irrigation, new official data show.

Over 80 per cent of rural households have marginal landholdings of less than one hectare (10,000 square metres) and just seven per cent own more than two hectares, data on household land ownership from the National Sample Survey Office show.

Tribal people are over-represented among the landless, Scheduled Castes among marginal land-owners, and forward castes among medium and large landholders, the data show.

Across the country, in every State, landholdings have decreased in size, almost halving in the last 20 years; in 1992, the average rural household was a small landholder with over one hectare of land, as compared with a marginal land-holder as of 2013 with 0.59 hectares of land.

Migration is relatively rare among agricultural households, but is highest among households with marginal landholdings unable to provide the family much income; over 75 per cent of all migrants come from marginal landowning households.

Among families with more land, far fewer have family members living away from home.

While the majority of Other Backward Castes (OBC) and forward caste rural households identify themselves as primarily self-employed in cultivation, the largest chunk of SC households in rural areas are engaged in wage labour or salaried employment.

India’s best-educated and most prosperous States — Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh — had the highest proportions of rural households engaged in wage employment, while in poorer States like Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh, 60 per cent of rural households were dependent on cultivation.

Over half of land-holdings used for agriculture are being used to grow cereals, the data shows. Between 60 and 70 per cent of land under cultivation is being irrigated directly from groundwater sources like tubewells.

Keywords: Rural landholding, irrigation, National Sample Survey Office

Source: The Hindu, 17-12-2015

Villages await reforms

UMA SHASHIKANT





Do away with initiatives that have not worked for the farmer, and instead allow free market to flow in

The sky was overcast. As we sat in the groundnut fields of a re mote village in Karnataka's Haveri, the farmers were har vesting the kharif crops and talking about sowing for the rabi season.One good rain, and the village would sow a second jowar crop. The harvested soya bean and corn lay covered in plastic. The tuvar buds were showing and needed a shower to break into dense flowers. A good winter would ensure a decent yield.The cotton crop failed due to lack of rain.When the farmers asked me to tell them what I knew about finance, I felt a mix of guilt, shame, rage and humility . The high world of finance and the market economy had not yet reached thousands of villages. Which was tragic and shameful.The Jan Dhan Yojana is but one of the many routine sarkari initiatives the villagers hear about. They are chased by banking correspondents, and many have opened bank accounts that remain inactive. They do not have the time to leave their work and queue up in the bank.Their incomes are too seasonal and sparse to worry about bank transactions.Life is simple. It begins at sunrise in the fields, and ends there as the sun sets.Wages are given on Thursday and the village market sells its wares on Friday where grocery and household items are bought. Stable income is not something the villagers know of.
The rains failed them again this year.They are staring at another year of low incomes. It is striking how little protection they have from this failure. When I ask them about crop insurance, they tell me that bank officials have not turned up to collect the premium. It is routine, so that claims are not made. No one believes crop insurance works.
The biggest heartache is the price for produce. There are chilly plants laden with fruit. But prices have crashed so much that the cost of harvesting the chillies is higher than the price it will fetch.They ask me for vegetable prices in Mumbai, and gasp at the numbers. They earn a tiny fraction of the final price we pay . This is fertile ground for NGOs to move in and protest the unfair deal to farmers.However, farmers themselves think the solution will come not from protest and noise but from sensible policy reform.
The market for agricultural produce is dominated by the moneyed middlemen.He incurs the costs of buying, storing, processing and transporting agricultural produce to the markets. But he makes a hefty margin for this role. A margin that villagers are more than willing to pay , because he will buy the entire lot and pay cash immediately . The farmer has no wherewithal to haul his produce to markets, or wait to sell and be paid later. He has his fields to return to.
The middlemen also double up as money lenders charging usurious rates of interest. In the last few years, the one big change has been the shift to crop loans from banks at a lower interest. But farmers are reluctant to take large loans, as they worry about indebtedness. They take annual loans for crops, and repay as soon as they sell, renewing the loan for the next season. They are too scared to take big loans for investing in solar energy , irrigation or even the more profitable long-term plantations.
If one took an enterprise view of the farm, it is a multi-bagger that yields a generous return for the investment it takes to grow a good crop. The process is well established, costs are not too high and the manpower needs not too sophisticated. The market for the produce is steady and growing. But what we have is a broken system where inputs like power and water are in chronic short supply; while seed and fertiliser are subsidised.The low return and the myriad risks means farmers who have given up have migrated to cities to to work as daily wagers. Shortage of farm hands and young new farmers hurts the sector even more.
What could I tell these farmers about money? A farmer's worry is just his produce --its growth, protection, harvest and sale. All these activities are prone to high risk and low return. There is no money to set aside and save. Financial goals are unheard of. Financial inclusion for these farmers is about enabling access to free and fair markets, enabling them to sow and harvest to plan. If confidence about income moves up, their ability to borrow, insure and hedge goes up. Minimum support prices, subsidies, free water and power and low cost loans are all relics of an era when the government behaved like a feudal king. It is time we dismantled what has not worked, and allowed the free market to flow in and benefit the farmer and the consumer.
The rain clouds gathered into a storm and poured. Everyone in the village was gleeful and the dinner conversation was only about the rain. Our dinnertime conversations in the city about the traffic seemed frivolous in comparison. Financial liberalisation of the 1990s has placed a lot of money in the hands of the urban Indian, while the rural India is stuck in a rut where reforms are overdue.
The author is Chairperson, Centre for Investment Education and Learning
Source: The Times of India, 12-10-2015

Off-Farm Measures to Ease Rural Distress





It is welcome that the government has increased the number of days for which work under the employment guarantee programme, NREGA, is available this year, as part of its measures to provide relief in this year of acute rural distress, thanks to a second consecutive year of deficient rains. There are a few other things the government can do away from the farm that will offer relief to farmers.Accelerate the farm-to-fork retail supply chains that many organised retailers dream of building but give up on, in the face of legal obstacle to buying directly from the farmer under the Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee Act, absence of power to run cold storages and transport networks. Offer subsidy for diesel-generated power this will disappear as grid power becomes available -for cold storages, incentivise states to exempt perishables from the APMC Act and let mail and express trains attach special coaches that carry refrig erated farm produce to cities. Remove the hank yarn obligation on cotton yarn producers. This would allow mills to offer farmersginners a better price for their cotton. Institute a factoring service for sugarcane growers: their dues from mills can be encashed, saving them from a dreaded descent into debt. Clamp down on illegal cigarettes smuggled into the country or produced locally by duty-evading fly-by-night operators from inferior tobacco, so that tobacco farmers are spared declining demand. Step up R&D to find uses for tobacco other than poisoning the human body , such as in pesticides and weedicides.
Just raising import duties on farm produce, as the government has been, is lazy policy . Set up a group in the Niti Aayog drawing people from different sectors, not just agriculture, to think about alleviating farm distress.
Source: Economic Times, 8-10-2015

Rural realities

New data for rural households revealed by the Socio Economic and Caste Census (SECC) represent a grim reminder of the state of rural India. In over 90 per cent of households, the main earning member makes less than Rs. 10,000 a month. Over half the households are landless and a similar share of them rely on casual manual labour for the larger part of their income. Just 20 per cent of households own any kind of a motor vehicle. These numbers should come as a reality check for those who talk of India’s unbridled growth, and arrival on the global stage as a superpower. The countryside remains unable to find jobs that can pull families out of poverty. Agriculture remains at subsistence levels, with low mechanisation, limited irrigation facilities and little access to credit. Just over 3 per cent of rural households have a family member who is a graduate, so skilled jobs are going to be hard to get. Female-headed households, and Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe households are the worst off. The eastern and central States of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha have the poorest indicators. Even in the developed southern States of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, family incomes are low and dependence on casual manual labour is high. Meanwhile, early results from the urban SECC suggest that levels of deprivation, while lower in cities, are still shockingly high.

What the government chooses to do with the data is as yet unclear. While commissioning the SECC, the UPA government had spoken of creating flexibility to enable States to draw up their own combinations of indicators to create tailor-made definitions of poverty. The Narendra Modi government is yet to make its intentions clear on the SECC, especially with regard to the thorny issue of where to draw the line. Instead of a fresh round of unseemly wrangling over precisely where to set India’s poverty line, the government would be well-advised to expand and universalise its social protection schemes, and leave some space for States to innovate. It would also be wise for the government to release caste-wise information on socio-economic indicators collected by the SECC but not yet put in the public domain. Those numbers would allow, for the first time since 1931, for the relative socio-economic status of various caste groups to be compared while framing policies of affirmative action. This government stands accused of suppressing vital new information on the status of malnutrition among children, contained in a survey commissioned by the previous government through UNICEF. It should not make a habit of suppressing inconvenient data. The Indian public might hotly contest some of these numbers, particularly those relating to caste, but even angry debates represent a democratic right that must not be curtailed.

Keywords: Socio Economic and Caste Census, SECC data, rural India, rural realities, casual manual labour

Why rural connect of Indian MNCs is a boon

By Vijay Mahajan





The rural DNA of Indian MNCs is their biggest strategic asset that will be hard for any other country to match

In the last three years, I had the fortune of visiting ten developing countries with the largest rural population seven in Asia (India, China, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Philippines) and three in Africa (Nigeria, Ethiopia and Egypt). These ten countries collectively include about 2.2 billion rural consumers out of more than 3.4 billion rural consumers in the world (around 65%) and 3 billion rural consumers in Asia and Africa (around 73 %).During my travels, I conducted hundreds of interviews with companies and NGOs and did market visits to rural areas and urban slums for my next book on the emergence and dynamics of rural consumers in developing countries. India leads this pack and the world with more than 800 million consumers living in rural markets and more than 150 million rural migrants living in urban centres who maintain links with their families, visiting them during festivals, special family occasions and harvest times, and supporting them financially through remittances. Rural migrants living outside India (especially in the Middle East) are connected with their families through Skype and mobile phones and remit extensively. Despite urbanisation, number of Indian consumers living in rural markets is not going south any time soon.
The rural BRIC
Consider the much talked about BRIC countries: Brazil, Russia, India and China. Brazil and Russia are mostly urbanised with less than 15% and 26% of their populations living in rural areas respectively. In fact, Brazil is more urbanised than the USA. Further, both of these countries have GDP per capita of more than $10,000 and are not considered developing countries as per my first book on developing countries, The 86 % Solution.Although China's GDP per capita is still less than $10,000, it has an active agenda to accelerate urbanisation -about 48 % of its population lives in rural markets, the second largest in the world. In terms of percentage of population living in urban areas, India is where the USA was at the end of 19th century and China is where it was in 1920s. Time will tell how fast India and China will attain the current percentage USA urban population size of more than 80%.
So how do the progressive companies grow in India? They grow by having an inclusive strategy that focuses both on urban consumers and rural consumers. It is in their DNA. Consider Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL). Although it is a European MNC, its Indian DNA is very rural along with Pakistan and Bangladesh, other two members of the top ten rural club, who report to its Mumbai office.
Unilever, in these three countries, caters to the needs of more than 1 billion rural consumers (more than 33 % of rural consumers living in Asia and Africa). It is not a coincidence that HUL requires its new executive recruits to spend some time in rural markets. I met a few senior executives during my travels who credit this feature of their HUL initiation for their success with their new positions.
HUL is considered a rural innovation hub in the Unilever universe. Many of its rural innovations have been rolled out to other de veloping countries (e.g, Shakti Amma , Help A Child Reach 5 campaign).
Rural aspirations and missed calls
During my travels, I was not surprised to find that aspirations of rural mothers are not any different from their urban counterparts.Why should they be? They also want the best for their families and children. Overall, their incomes are increasing and thanks to mobile and satellite technologies; they are connected via mobile phones and television.Consider, for example, the recent acquisition of Bangalore-based ZipDial by Twitter.ZipDial has capitalised on the “missed call“ behaviour of Indian consumers and is helping companies like HUL connect their brands to rural consumers. “Missed Call“ behaviour is not unique to Indian consumers. During my travels, my drivers communicated with me through missed calls. Even the Indian TV industry is using rural or semi-rural settings and stories to create successful TV serials that appeal even to urban consumers. Directbroadcast satelliteinternet service providers, like Dish in the USA, are broadcasting these stories all over the world.
Indian MNCs are leading the way in rural consumer markets. I learned a lot from a number of companies from different sectors, including Dabur, Marico, Hero, Maruti , CEAT, Dish TV, Airtel, Micromax, Mahindra, Aadhaar Retailing, FINO, ICICI Bank and Amul. I did not realise that India has one of the largest tribal populations. I was moved by the work done by an amazing NGO called PRADAN that helps tribal families attain sustainable living and make them potential consumers for the various products and services. Social Franchisors cre ated by World Health Partners are bringing medical advice and medicines to the rural consumers via emerging video technologies.It is now crossing the seas to Africa. FICCI and Government of India Technology Board is working with the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, my academic home, to nurture young entrepreneurs to develop rural innovations and solutions that they can export to other developing countries also.
In my opinion, the rural DNA of Indian MNCs is their biggest strategic asset that will be hard for any other country to match.It is the rural DNA that they can and are carrying across the 86% of the world population that lives in developing countries. They understand how to appeal to the aspirations of rural consumers amidst lack of infrastructure, economic and language diversity, and unorganised retail markets. Consider Africa. Almost all of its 50 plus countries have huge rural populations including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, South Africa and Mozambique. I am sure this is not news for some of the Indian MNCs. Many of them are already there. CD
The author is the John P.Harbin Centennial Chair in Business at Mccombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin
Edit & Desk : Dibeyendu Ganguly, Moinak Mitra, Priyanka Sangani, Dearton Thomas Hector and TV Mahalingam Design : Shubhra Dey, Sanjeev Raj Jain, Nitin Keer

Rural technology park promotes indigenous technologies

Government of India is setting up such parks in five African countries

Not many would be aware that the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), Hyderabad has a well established Rural Technology Park (RTP). Here, several relevant and user-friendly technologies are showcased which are useful for improving rural livelihoods.

Training is given to interested budding entrepreneurs for their skill up-gradation. After training, they are also assisted, so that they can start their enterprises.

The Institute has adopted more than 100 villages across the country where innovative ideas are implemented.

Current focus

“We are also focusing on “Make in India” theme. The idea is to identify critical gaps and address them by enhancing the quality and marketability of the products having an eye on market demand.

“As the Indian market itself is so huge, rural producers can tap it and in the process, create enormous value for their enterprises. This is a very important step, especially in creating opportunities for the rural youth across the country and also addressing the current unemployment scenario,” says Dr. M.V.Rao, Director General, NIRD.

For example, the Institute is promoting the concept of harnessing solar energy at a big level. Solar street lights have become very popular in all the villages adopted by the Institute.

Lights have been installed in all these villages with community involvement.

“Earlier a solar street light used to cost more than Rs.20,000, but thanks to innovative designs, the cost is now reduced to less than Rs.4,000 and several such lights have been installed in remote villages in Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgarh and Maharashtra,” says Dr. Rao.

Preserving food stuff

Tee Wave, a technology partner with the Institute is working on this concept for preserving vegetables, fruits and fish.

Unlike traditional motors and appliances which run on high electricity, these appliances run on very low power DC motors. Hence, these are very useful in remote areas where electricity is a problem. For crops like soya, Saraswathi Mahila Gruha Udyog, a sort of self help group, has been created which is manufacturing a lot of products like soya milk, papad and soya powder.

Honey bee

Those interested in honey bee rearing can visit the honey house to learn how to set up bee boxes, honey extraction and value addition. NIRD has been training hundreds of entrepreneurs in bee-keeping as well as honey collection and preservation.

Another component is the training programmes in bio-fertilizers and bio-pesticides. This is fast finding a lot of popularity among the farmers from several states.

Emphasis is placed on how to manufacture bio inputs because sourcing inputs is a big problem for growers on time.

The institute conducts training on neem based enterprises and vermi-composting as these are eco-friendly and are preferred in organic farming.

Cooking gas is not available easily in villages. Rural women need to go to nearby forest areas to collect firewood for cooking.

The institute has developed various models and efficient technologies for cooking. These include models developed by Centre for Science & Villages (CSV), Wardha and Appropriate Rural Technologies Institute, Maharashtra.

Cooking stove

NIRD has tied up with both these organisations to popularise these cooking stoves and various innovative models so that cooking happens faster with fuel efficiency. In some of these models, as a by-product, cooking coal is also produced. This is used again as fuel.

“We invite farmers, rural youth, women self help groups and NGOs across the country to come and visit our technology park so that they can get a better idea as to how it can help them,” says Dr. Rao.

Success

The success of the technology park has encouraged the Government of India to commit setting up such parks in five African countries including Malawi and Zimbabwe to start with, as part of India-Africa partnership.

For more information interested readers can contact Dr. M.V. Rao, Director General, National institute of Rural Development & Panchayati Raj, email : mvraoforindia@gmail.com, Mobile : 09703440004.

Keywords: National Institute of Rural Development, agricultural technology

Idukki becomes first district in India to get high-speed rural broadband connectivity

India's first high-speed rural broadband network, the National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN), was commissioned in Kerala's Idukki district on Monday. With this, the district, which has a large tribal and rural population, has become the country's first district to have all its village panchayats connected to NOFN, the world's largest rural broadband connectivity project through optical fibre cable.

NOFN is the only telecom project of its kind in the country in terms of volume of work, geographical spread of work, reach, quantity of optical fibre cable laying involved and costs. The Rs 30,000 crore NOFN project, which involves laying of about 600,000 km of optical fiber cable, is a part of Central government's Digital India initiative. The project seeks to link all the 250,000 gram panchayats in the country, located in 6,600 blocks in 631 districts through optical fibre network, providing high-speed Internet connectivity with a minimum bandwidth of 100 megabits per second (Mbps).

"Our country is entering into a new era of digital empowerment. The NOFN project is a giant leap to bridge the digital divide between urban and the rural India by linking all the gram panchayats in the country through the common platform of optical fibre cable. Our vision is to transform our country into a knowledge economy," said Ravi Shankar Prasad, Union Minister of Communication and Information & Technology, who launched the programme in Thiruvananthapuram by receiving the first-ever mobile call from Edamalakkudy, a remote tribal gram panchayat in Idukki. This tribal gram panchayat is 34 km away from the nearest town and has no road connectivity, electricity or piped water.  This settlement was connected to NOFN through VSAT media which has also provided them with voice connectivity. All the 52 other gram panchayats in the district have been comnnected by optical fibre cables.

NOFN, implemented by Bharat Broad Band Nigam Limited (BBNL), a Special Purpose Vehicle set up by the Central government, will be completed in a phased manner by 2016. The project will cover 50,000 gram panchayats in the first phase and will be implemented by three Central public sector units—BSNL, Railtel and PGCIL. The project will be funded by the Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) of the Telecom Department.

Why optical fibre?

According to Aruna Sundararajan, chief managing director of BBNL and administrator of USOF, optical fibre is the most economical means of communication as it can carry higher bandwidth applications. NOFN will ensure high-speed broadband connectivity to all the gram panchayats. This is to be achieved by utilising the existing optical fibre network of public sector companies and extending it to village panchayats.

"NOFN is expected to open up new avenues for access service providers like mobile operators, cable TV operators to launch next generation services," says Sundararajan. The project has the potential to transform governance, information and technology, education, health, environment, entertainment, business, agriculture and development planning through high speed Internet connectivity, and will also create local employment, says she.

GPON technology

The project uses Gigabit Passive Optical Network (GPON) technology for the first time in the country. GPON enables a single optical fibre to connect multiple village panchayats. The technology uses passive (unpowered) optical splitters, reducing the cost.

"GPON technology will carry information in the form of packets which is the technology of the day," says Sundararajan. She also points out that this technology has low power consumption equipment which is designed and manufactured in the country and hence suitable for rural India.

To ensure connectivity throughout the day, solar power back up is also provided, she adds.

The project boasts high-capacity network management system and network operation centre. Plans for about 4,500 Blocks have been put onBBNL website  under "Know your Fibre".

Sep 10 2014 : Mirror (Pune)

Solar desalination for Indian villages

Pune Mirror Bureau punemirror.feedback@gmail.com TWEET @ThePuneMirror





A new initiative could create off-the-grid solar-powered desalination plants that could provide palatable drinking water to rural Indian communities with salty groundwater

Around the world, there is more salty groundwater than fresh, drinkable groundwater. For example, 60 per cent of India is underlain by salty water – and much of that area is not served by an electric grid that could run conventional reverseosmosis desalination plants.Now an analysis by Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers shows that a different desalination technology called electrodialysis, powered by solar panels, could provide enough clean, palatable drinking water to supply the needs of a typical village.
The study, by Natasha Wright and Amos Winter, appears in the journal Desalination.
Winter explains that finding optimal solutions to problems such as saline groundwater involves “detective work to understand the full set of constraints imposed by the market.” After weeks of field research in India, and reviews of various established technologies, he says, “when we put all these pieces of the puzzle together, it pointed very strongly to electrodialysis” – which is not what is commonly used in developing nations.
The factors that point to the choice of electrodialysis in India include both relatively low levels of salinity – ranging from 500 to 3,000 milligrams per liter, compared with seawater at about 35,000 mg/L – as well as the region’s lack of electrical power.
Such moderately salty water is not directly toxic, but it can have longterm effects on health, and its unpleasant taste can cause people to turn to other, dirtier water sources.
“It’s a big issue in the water-supply community,” Winter says.
HOW IT WORKS
Electrodialysis works by passing a stream of water between two electrodes with opposite charges. Because the salt dissolved in water consists of positive and negative ions, the electrodes pull the ions out of the water, Winter says, leaving fresher water at the center of the flow. A series of membranes separate the freshwater stream from increasingly salty ones.
Both electrodialysis and reverse osmosis require the use of membranes, but those in an electrodialysis system are exposed to lower pressures and can be cleared of salt buildup simply by reversing the electrical polarity.
That means the expensive membranes should last much longer and require less maintenance, Winter says. In addition, electrodialysis systems recover a much higher percentage of the water – more than 90 per cent, compared with about 40 to 60 per cent from reverse-osmosis systems, a big advantage in areas where water is scarce.
Having carried out this analysis, Wright and Winter plan to put together a working prototype for field evaluations in India in January.
While this approach was initially conceived for village-scale, self-contained systems, Winter says the same technology could also be useful for applications such as disaster relief, and for military use in remote locations.
Susan Amrose, a lecturer in civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Berkeley who was not involved in this work, says, Amrose adds, “The water scarcity challenges facing India in the near future cannot be overstated. India has a huge population living on top of brackish water sources in regions that are water-scarce or about to become waterscarce. A solution with the potential to double recoverable water in an environment where water is becoming more precious by the day could have a huge impact.”