Spread across eight acres of parched land in Tilonia, Rajasthan, Barefoot College runs solely on solar electricity. Set up in 1972 by Sanjit ‘Bunker’ Roy, the NGO trains hundreds of underprivileged ladies and aged women in solar technology so that they can go back and light up their villages.
A Doon school and St Stephen’s graduate, you received the most premium education one can dream to have in India. Did Barefoot result because of, or despite that?
Books aren’t everything. To me, unless knowledge has a practical output, it means nothing. Despite my education and expertise, I had a lot to learn before I could be any help. Actually, I had a lot of “unlearning” to do, mainly to shed the superior attitude that I had absorbed all through the schooling period. What actually is a pre-requisite is conviction and practical sense to begin the process of demystifying technology. Tragically that is totally absent in the so-called higher places of learning. After college, for a few years I worked as an amateurish labourer blasting open wells for water. I lived with very poor people under the stars and heard the simple stories they had to tell of their skills and wisdom that university education can never teach you. My real education started when I saw these amazing people – water diviners, traditional bonesetters and midwives at work. Through this unlearning practice, I created the concept of the first college of its kind. At Barefoot College, everyone is considered an education source, the teacher as well as the student and the literate as well as illiterate. And that’s why Barefoot is a radical departure from the traditional concept of a ‘college’. The fact is that the knowledge and skills were used for hundreds of years, well before the urban doctor, teacher and engineer turned up in villages.
Do you think it is realistic to suggest mandatory community service for every citizen?
The thing about community service is that it has to come from within. The education system should be modelled to make you feel that community service is important. The current system does not encourage creativity. It does not encourage you to think differently. Anyone going back to the village after University or College is considered a ‘failure’ and mandatory community service will not change this attitude.
Were you enthused by Gandhism while initiating Barefoot?
I never read Mahatma Gandhi in school nor did I read him when I started Barefoot. I read him much later in life and could relate to him. I realised Gandhism is in our everyday lives. The question is whether you recognise it. The more you introspect, the more you feel Gandhi around you. The feeling is mostly overshadowed by materialistic values of the world. The impetus was to work with the really poor people and see how best with very little money, we could tangibly improve their lives. Freedom from hunger and want. Freedom from fear, discrimination, exploitation and injustice. The thing is, the ideas about eradicating poverty all over the world are pretty useless. Under the present top-down model, the goals of NGOs have been wrecked compartmentally into project mode, to suit donors and governments. The virtual actuality in which the creators of many international and national development plans live, full of road maps, ideas to change the world and fact sheets is startling. Only scholarly activists who have no idea how to reach the very poor need that. All we need is partnerships between poor communities so that they learn from one another and share traditional, practical knowledge and skills. Importing pricey, unworkable ideas, equipment and consultants and money from the urban areas only destroy the ability of hamlets to help themselves. Distribution can be made more equitable if the Gandhian non-violent approach, strongly rejecting the classical arrogant top down development approach of the experts, is instead put into practice.
How easy or difficult was it, convincing the villagers about that idea?
Very difficult. It is an everyday battle. You win some and you lose some. When people tell me there are no local solutions, I don’t believe them. There is an indigenous solution everywhere. Taking the people into confidence from the very beginning of the process of planning and implementation while scooting for solutions to local issues, and not after the project is written and approved in places where experience of poverty is merely virtual (like in the World Bank or UN) is the best solution to the problem.
Did you seek government help? How did they react?
You can scale up an organisation only when you work with the government. Making sure they are a part of the process, building a relationship of trust and dependency smoothens up the process. When we first introduced the idea, it was revolutionary. Now it has been adopted as government policy. The government funding is provided under the Colombo Plan for Cooperative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific, a regional inter governmental development programme which began at the Commonwealth Conference on Foreign Affairs in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1951. This includes return airfare, the course fee, a book allowance, accommodation, living allowance, study tour and emergency medical coverage during the trainees’ stay in India.
What do you think of India’s future in renewable energy?
Only answer to this is to decentralise and demystify the renewable resources technology at the grassroots level. The locals should be the one creating, owning and managing renewable sources of energy. Right from problem identification to allotment of resources should be done, at that level.
What is next in line for Barefoot?
You know what we are doing at Barefoot? Currently we have five from Peru, 5 from Chile, 2 from Rwanda training with us for the solar programme. So far, only 40 countries have been covered. There are 170 more to go. Lots of work to be done.
