At some point in my professional career, I was heading a large and pioneering skill development company as its COO. My team had trained and placed over 250,000 below-poverty-line youth from the most backward and, in many cases severely affected by the left-wing movement, geographies. These young boys and girls, after successful training were migrated to the metro cities for employment. In this process little did we realize that such migration was very unnatural. This was the worst form of brain drain that we were a party to. Youth who had never seen electricity or used the metro or even cars were suddenly transported to cities with state of art facilities. I now realize that such migration is akin to a kidney transplant in which the body tends to reject it. There has to be a smarter way of providing employment in the very geographies where they grew up. At the same time, we know that most of the Indian villages are not that attractive in terms of motivating the youth to stay back. How do then we solve this riddle? The answer is to make the villages smart. But that is again oversimplification.
In India, over 290 million people are without access to electricity and 90% of these live in rural areas. These villages are off-grid. In such villages, housewives use kerosene for cooking and men use diesel for energy generation. Kerosene and firewood are proven to be the main cause of ailments affecting housewives. In many instances, these have been found to cause premature death. Diesel generates greenhouse emissions. We all know that energy has a huge catalytic force in augmenting education, health, food and any form of productive enterprise. So the moot question is how do we ensure energy availability to such off-grid villages so that the youth find gainful employment in the villages? A report suggests that most of the off-grid villages are in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar- two of the most populous states of India. The report further states that rural consumers spend about $2.5 billion per annum on kerosene and around 840 million people in rural households use solid biomass as fuel for cooking. In recent times we have witnessed huge migration even from the grid-connected villages to the cities and therefore the off-grid villages have a huge problem unless some innovative and transformational solutions are implemented. The solutions come in the form of harnessing solar energy in the agricultural value chain comprising milk, vegetables, rice and pulses. Through solar power mini-grids can be set up that can charge solar water pumping systems, cold storage can be set up with solar energy, and homes and farms can be lighted with lighting systems that can charge batteries and phones. In addition, solar-powered tractors, milking machines, and solar-powered hydroponics systems can change the village landscape. Keeping these objectives in mind we have created an entity named L3 ( Leasing for Leveraging Livelihood). This entity comprises two US-based firms specializing in lease finance and post-harvest losses and the Indian outfit specializes in developing suitable diagnostic tools. Let me take just one example of tractors that we use in East Africa. We train the youth in the maintenance of tractors and expose him to a financial inclusion model that exposes him to various aspects of using the equipment optimally. The tractor is given on lease with all risks covered partially by the Africa Guarantee Fund. Thus we have observed that the youth who hated agriculture is now interested in working as his role profile has changed. We supplement his technical skills with business planning and financial inclusion modules. Now he understands the advantages of using his tractor optimally. The selection of the youth is done carefully by using our proprietary Business Excellence Index (BXI). This is just one example to highlight how solar power can do wonders in making villages smart. Expecting all the Indian villages to have 100% grid connectivity is not feasible in the next 20 years. If we need to reverse the brain drain and bring a smile on the face of the lady sitting before the chulah ( Indian Stove) harnessing intelligently the solar power is the only way forward. That is my recipe to make the off-grid villages 'smart'.
