Solar Power generation in Uttar Pradesh

An energy injustice exists within India that is obstructing our economic and social development. Greenpeace believes the solution to this injustice lies in developing an infrastructure of decentralised energy generation systems that can be managed by the communities they serve, utilising renewable energy technologies. One such example can be found in the state of Uttar Pradesh, where in a small, quiet village in Bundelkhand, an energy revolution is taking place.

At first glance, Rampura could almost be any other village in India: long flat fields of clodded earth, cattle resting in the shade of uneven houses with heavy-lidded eyes. Just one of the many forgotten villages in which election promises are rarely kept. But Rampura’s unassuming appearance belies a poineering reality, for this village is home to India’s first community-run solar power plant.

Ghyanshyam Singh Yadav is the leader of the village solar committee, the democratically elected village body responsible for managing the plant and the electricity it supplies. He’s also a farmer, a big, gentle man who rests his hand on the plant’s solar panels as he explains their story.

“Since before Independence we had always used kerosene lamps,” he recalls. “All the villages around us had electricity, it was only ours that didn’t. We approached politicians, district managers, the electricity board… the politicians would always agree when it was election time, then later they would refuse. Until 1997 there was absolutely nothing here, not even roads or a school.”

The complete lack of infrastructure meant that the villagers were cut off from society. “We had no idea of the outside world as we had no newspapers, let alone news channels. Over 90% of the villagers were illiterate,” Ghyanshyam says.

A number of development programmes and the formation of a development committee in the village lead to a small school and some basic water and sanitation structure, but the day would still end for residents when the sun went down. In 2008, the residents heard of a Norwegian company called Scatec Solar looking to conduct an electricity project with a village in India. Ghyanshyam and his colleagues jumped at the chance, offering the company land on which to build their plant and forming a solar committee. The 8.7KW peak plant was constructed in a mere 28 days, a collaborative effort between Scatec, the villagers and an Indian organisation called Development Alternatives.

“It’s a pity that another country had to come and help us, and our own government sat by for years and didn’t,” Ghyanshyam says. “But we’re not ashamed. We worked 24 hours a day for a month to put this together, and we’re proud of it even though it came from outside.”

The solar power plant that has made such a difference to the residents’ lives is surprisingly small: three neat rows of photovoltaic panels that slant towards the sun, a control room with a row of batteries and a monitoring room to gauge the success of the project. The area is gated to protect it from accidental damage by untrained villagers, but the gate is open most of the time and children play in the compound, ducking in and out of the panels. In the nine months the project has been running, the only (minor) damage has come from one particularly voracious storm, and there has not been one minute of power failure – a stark contrast to the frequent power cuts and poor quality supply that plagues the surrounding, grid-connected villages.

Once Rampura’s plant was set up, villagers who wanted an electricity supply paid to have a connection made to their house, and so a small, decentralised mini-grid feeds 44 homes and several streetlights. Although power generation by solar is free, the villagers pay a small amount for the electricity they use, which goes into a communal bank account in preparation for the mandatory battery replacement that will be required in a few years.

Still, the costs are often less than the villagers used to pay for the weak, smoky kerosene lamps that used to soot their walls. Bablu Singh Yadav, another of Rampura’s farmers, used to pay Rs. 250 a month for kerosene to light dinner for the family. When the electricity came, two CFLs cost him Rs. 60, provided a far better quality of light and could be turned on at any time. It’s hard to hear his explanation of this though, as the old black and white TV in the background is blaring the Mahabharat, watched avidly by his four daughters and their friends. Electricity use quickly progressed in Rampura, and Bablu holds one of the village’s few cable connections.

“I’ve suddenly got a better idea of what the world is like, “ he says, crediting the exposure with improving both his business and his knowledge of national politics. “We [men] used to come home from the fields, have a drink, go and talk and end up having a fight,” he recalls. “Now, we watch television and talk about politics.”

His girls are less shy too, he says – they’re always trying to copy wrestling moves they see on television. Now they have light to study by they’ve improved so much at school that he’s considering sending them away to complete their education.

Rampura’s female community has benefited in other ways too, which are specific to this type of decentralised model. Rajeshwari Devi is gorgeous, bright and at just 19 is the second in charge of the solar committee. I ask her what her husband thinks.

“He doesn’t think much,” she laughs. “But he thinks its great. It’s important to keep developing. People stay at home together in the evenings now, which is much nicer, and the streetlights mean people feel safer if they want to go out after dark. But I think the next generation will really benefit.” She tucks her little boy under her arm. Her daughter is in class V and has just started lessons on the village’s one computer, donated by the German company, and also powered by the solar power plant.

Down the hill from Rajeshwari’s house a steady roar fills the otherwise quiet path. When Rampura’s mini-grid was set up, Balwan Singh Yadav saw an opportunity to boost income and bought a small flour-mill. His teenage son operates it now, flour on his school trousers.

“I saw an opportunity for us to have an edge over other villages,” he explains. “As we have electricity for 24 hours a day and they don’t. We used to have to travel to grind our wheat, but now other villages come here, and outsource to us.”

The money the family makes from the flour mill is not as significant as that they make from agriculture, but it’s certainly more reliable in the drought-hit Bundelkhand region. The steady flow of income has finally enabled Balwan’s family to move out of his brother’s house, and into a home of their own. In the central courtyard outside his wife scrubs their little daughter in the sunshine, then lies her down and kisses her feet.

The stark difference between Rampura and some of the other remote villages visited for this report is disheartening in one way, and brings hope in another. The assured supply of quality electricity is bringing all the development benefits so familiar to India’s city dwellers, but there is something else here too: the self-governance of the system has strengthened the community and instilled a sense of ambition and pride which is apparent throughout, from conversations with the residents right down to the absence of litter in the streets. Three families that left the village for the city before the solar plant was installed are now trying to move back – a refreshing and rare case of reverse-migration.

India’s villages are self-sufficient by their nature, and so a decentralised energy-generation system that allows their processes to continue unhindered by outside restraints will of course be beneficial. But self-sufficient is not the same as self-contained, and the pleasure the residents have in connecting with the rest of society through this electricity supply is clear. It is interesting to note that Ghyanshyam, the driving force behind the village’s solar power plant, has never heard of climate change: the decentralised system makes sense for the village on a local level alone.

“We wanted to do something historical with our village, and show others how a village can and should be,” he says. “We’ve gone from dark to light, and we want to inspire the rest of the country.”

Solar power at a school in Jalka

In March 2009, Greenpeace India installed solar panels onto the roof of two schools in Jalka Village, Yavatmal district, Maharashtra. The village had come to the country’s attention when Rahul Gandhi used the example of Kalavati, a widow living without electricity in Jalka, as supporting evidence for India’s need to expand her nuclear power generation. Set up in a mere three days, the photovoltaic panels serve to both refute the need for the lengthy set-up times and implicated dangers of nuclear power plants, and also as a symbol of how decentralised renewable systems can provide energy solutions for rural communities. Six months later, the residents of Jalka gave their verdicts on the system.

Outside, crowds of men and women dance in the street to the boom of drums and jangling of pipes, raising clouds of dust and purple gulal into the air. It’s the last day of Dessara, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the children of Jalka. Inside the village primary school, the children are sitting quietly, heads bent in concentration under the steady whir of electric fans.

“Attendance has really improved since the fans were installed,” says Joti Hirurkar, a teacher at Jalka Zilla Prishad School. “Instead of fidgeting and running around, the students are more comfortable and sit quietly and study. Before the fans, kids also used to fall sick a lot due to the heat. That’s not happening anymore.”

Before the installation of the solar panels, the primary school had an electricity connection that afforded them a single light bulb, an mismatching and unnecessary cost in an establishment that was closed at night time but experienced temperatures of up to 50 degrees Celsius during the day. The secondary school, which is semi-private, uses its solar panels to run the village’s only computer. A local electrician maintains both systems, at a small cost to the schools.

Three-quarters of the houses in Jalka are connected to the centralised power grid – the remainder of the population live below the poverty line and can’t afford it – but the power supply is unreliable, inflicting seven to eight hours of power cuts per day at the time of writing. Vidharba region, of which Yavatmal is a constituent district, generates a surplus of the power it needs through its four thermal power plants, but over half is transmitted to other states.

And the villagers’ power requirements extend further than lights or fans, with more immediate financial consequences.

“The power cut is during the day, so we have no power to irrigate our crops,” says Rudeshwar, a panchayat member and farmer. “There’s water in the well, but no way to spread it. Drinking water should be pulled up by electric pumps too, but we’re having to use hand pumps instead.”

Most Jalka farmers grow cotton , which needs at least an hour of rain every eight days to flourish, something the residents say can no longer be relied upon.

“The monsoon this year has been particularly bad,” continues Rudeshwar, “though generally rainfall has been decreasing over recent years. And the weaker the monsoon, the more power we’ll need for irrigation. This year, I think we will have lost 90% of our crop. We’re waiting to see if the government will waive our loans.”

In fact, this year’s monsoon has brought the lowest rainfall in the Vidharba region of the last ten years. Yavatmal district, previously known as the ‘suicide belt’ of the region, has been the worst hit.

However, so satisfied are Jalka’s residents with the uninterrupted power supply to the school’s fans that they have sent a written proposal to the panchayat samiti requesting that solar panels be placed on the roof of every house.

“We see the solar panels working perfectly. In our village, the electricity is not working perfectly. Therefore we would like all power to come from panels like this,” reiterates Anasua, the panchayat president. “Everybody signed the letter, though we haven’t heard anything back yet. Rudeshwar also met the BJP candidate and told him the same thing, but we’re waiting for his visit also.”

As an alternative to photovoltaic panels on every roof, Jalka’s residents are also open to the idea of a community solar power plant, which would spread electricity through a decentralised grid. This might be better, they think, because it would allow the responsibility of the panels’ maintenance to be shared. They’ve also put thought into how the costs will be covered.

“The government paid for 90% of the cost of our electric water pump. We paid for the other 10% and are paying for the warden to take care of it, and the electricity we use through it,” explains Rudeshwar. “We’d be willing to follow a similar scheme with solar.”

“Decentralised systems would be a good thing for the whole village, ” concludes Joti Hirurkar. “Particularly for small businesses that do things like flour grinding – these get hit very hard by the power shortages. As for our school, next we’d like to use solar to power a computer.”

A midwife works by lamplight

Mundolav Village in Ajmer District, Rajasthan, is connected to the electricity grid, but this doesn’t mean the 400 families who live there enjoy much of the benefits of electricity. Scheduled power cuts in this rural area mean they have access to power for only three hours during the day, and four hours in the evening. For the rest of their light the residents use kerosene lamps and candles, but there is no power alternative for irrigating their crops. The Barefoot College in nearby Tilonia has distributed three solar lamps to Mundolav: two are used to run a night school for children, and the third is used by the local midwife.

Danwarsingh Rajput, 35, Teacher
“We have night schools here as during the day children have to take the animals to find grazing, and so can’t come for classes. So we have school from 7pm to 10pm every night, on the verandah of my house. Twenty-eight children come between 1st and 5th standard and we teach them everything – reading and writing, mathematics, geography.

“Before we got the solar lanterns we were using kerosene lamps, which didn’t give enough light and strained the eyes. Children would have to sit very close to the lamp and would get bothered and bitten by the insects that came to the light. They’re very smoky too, which would make us cough and give breathing problems. The solar lamps are clean and give out more light, so we can sit further away from the insects. They don’t blow out like the kerosene lamps either, which means that we can walk the children home after school when it’s late at night and not as safe. So more children come now, and we can have school more often – because the solar lamps don’t go out in wind or rain like the kerosene lamps, now we have classes in all seasons.”

Hagami Devi, 40, Midwife
“I’ve been a midwife for ten years now; before I earned a labourer’s wage. The community selected me and sent me to Barefoot College for training to help the village women in their pregnancy. I like it: there are no other health facilities in rural places like this and so the women rely on me.

“Every day I do the rounds of the pregnant women in the village. In the evening I take the solar light to examine them by. Some are very nervous because it is their first baby, and having the light helps them feel calmer. We have a little electricity in this village, but what if there is a delivery in the middle of the night? Kerosene lamps are dim and I can’t see the situation of the child properly. They’re also a fire hazard. So having the solar lantern is a big help.

“In my ten years as a midwife I’ve delivered 200-300 children by the light of this solar lantern. This month alone it has helped me deliver eight healthy babies.”

Gajanand Vaishanav, unemployed resident
Gajanand Vaishanav can’t speak very much, but through his gestures and the words of the other villagers he communicated his story.

The electrical wires that connect the village are low quality, he says, as contractors take advantage of the residents’ low level of education to purchase cheap wires and keep the surplus money. During the rainy season the walls of the houses sometimes become electrified and consequently accidents happen – three years ago, three children died from shocks imparted by faulty wiring.

During the rainy season ten years ago, an electrical wire fell onto Gajanand’s head and electrocuted him. He didn’t die, but spent two weeks in hospital and can no longer speak articulately. His hands are frozen as claws and one is withered; his blood circulation is poor and his limbs are thin and useless. Where the electrical wire touched his head no hair grows and there is a stripe of scarred scalp. The majority of his days are spent lying on a mat in the house of his elderly mother as his condition means he can’t work, and has never married. He is in constant pain.

Dr Prakash Lalwani talks about the health risks of coal power

Dr Prakash Lalwani, M.B.B.S, M.S, is a general physician and the founder of Wakewar Hospital in Parli, where he has been practicing for eight years. Less than 2km from Parli town is Parli Thermal Power Station, a 920MW coal-fired power station that has been operating – and expanding – for nearly forty years. The plant in its current form uses 1100 metric tonnes of coal per day, producing 3500 metric tonnes of fly ash per day and an unspecified amount of waste gases. Construction work for another 250MW unit is underway. Like many other coal-fired thermal power plants, Parli TPS has been criticised for its lack of proper waste management, which means much of its waste fly ash is blown from the dump to surrounding areas. We asked Dr Lalwani about the health consequences of living in these areas.

What are the health problems associated with living near Parli Thermal Power Station?

There are three major types of health problems associated. The first are lung problems. [Ash consists of] very minor particles, which go inside the lungs and block the bronchioles, and cause Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Diseases (C.O.P.D), bronchial asthma, things like that. Bronchial asthma is seen more often. Obviously pollution is not the only factor causing lung disease, but C.O.P.D lowers the resistance of the lungs to secondary infections such as Tuberculosis. A physician in this area performed a survey that showed a seven-fold increase in lung disease in our area over a five-year period. This is a result of air pollution, which is produced by the thermal power station and now also by the cement factories which have started up around it. The lung conditions are definitely associated with this ash.

The second type is skin problems – chronic skin diseases have definitely increased here. All the people who work on the fly ash ponds have skin problems – eczema, allergic dermatitis. As the ash is mixed with water they can get fungal infections too. The chances of skin cancer are there too, in the long term.

The third thing is allergies. I haven’t performed clinical studies, but I’ve been seeing these problems in my patients for the last ten years, and the number of patients with these diseases has increased. If you talk to any physician over here they will also tell you the same thing.

How widespread are these problems?

The chances of developing diseases are of course higher for those who are in very close contact with the ash, but there is a risk for the people who stay near it too. If it’s not the rainy season, the ash is like a fog, covering a 20km area [around the power plant]. If you go up to my roof [here in the city] and mark a 1ft by 1ft square, by morning it will be studded with these particles. It stops for 8 hrs after it rains, but apart from that it is constant, and it’s worst in the summer.

The problem is that chronic diseases caused by this pollution don’t affect people immediately. It is a slow process. If I work in these conditions in 2009, I may only develop the diseases in 2014, for example. So it’s hard to hold the contractors responsible.

The drinking water for this area comes from a small open dam not more than 2km by air from the power plant, so I would say the water is definitely being affected. The vegetables we eat are also polluted by the chemicals contained within the fly ash.

What could improve the situation?

Legally, this thermal power plant should be eight kilometres away from the city. It is just touching now. Twenty-five years back, before the city expanded, it was still just two kilometres away. We understand it might not be feasible to shift the power station, but at least when they are building new plants they should be built a proper distance away from the city! It’s cheaper for them to build the power stations close to one another, as they won’t need as many managerial staff to run them. There’s also ample manpower and water near the cities.

The transportation of the materials is also not proper. Sprinkling is also required – legally – for the transportation of coal, but it is being transported dry, in open containers. Ash should be [transported] mixed with water, but it’s not being. If you come in summer season you will see the air looks like this is a hill station. But this is not a fog. It is the presence of that ash in the surroundings. For cement factories etc., the ash is directly taken from the power station site, with no water involved.

The people who work with the fly ash wear no protection – no boots, no face masks. Lack of awareness may be one reason for this, but the main reason is poverty. If a worker is earning Rs.100-150 per day, how will he pay for these things after he has provided for his family? So it should be the responsibility of the contractors, or the government, to see that they are given the proper protection.

What’s being done?

Nothing. Every 3-4 months, the local people hold a protest. On paper, you’ll find that there are boards displaying the amount of air pollution, like they display temperature in some places. But paper is the only place you’ll find these boards – they haven’t been implemented in reality.

How is the power situation here?

The power situation is the worst. At least what we demanded was: if we are giving electricity to half of Maharashtra, at least we should not have power cuts. We are suffering all types of losses. At least give us the benefit [of full power supply]. In towns, we have 6-10 hours of powercuts per day, depending on the season. In my farm, which is in a rural area just beside the thermal power station, I get power for only 4-6 hours per day. We use gensets instead, which run on diesel. Yet the leaves of the small amount of sugarcane I grow are grey with ash, even in rainy season.

Parli Thermal Power Plant and fly ash pond

“We did the protest because the situation had become really bad,” Shiavagi Ghayal explains in the quiet evening. The horizon is bathed in orange, and the setting sun has turned the still pools of water around him to mirror. It could almost be a beach, but the sand we’re standing on is ash, tens of feet deep and packed solid; the accumulated waste of years from Parli Thermal Power Station in Beed District, Maharashtra. The tall thin flues of the plant puff peacefully in the distance: from here the 24 hour rat-a-tat of machinery can’t be heard and the white fumes trail away into the evening sky like ribbons.

“Every day when it wasn’t raining, the wind was picking up the fly ash from this dump and bringing it into our homes,” continues Shiavagi. “It was coming into our kitchens and settling on food. By July, it was an inch and a half deep on surfaces. We’d sweep it away but it would build back up again within a day. People were developing allergies and the ash was making people’s eyes and skin red and sore. Children had stopped going to school because the minute they stepped outside they turned grey.”

Waste Ash from the Thermal Power Plant in Parli

Coal-fired power plants produce two types of waste: the gaseous is released into the air through flues, while the solid (fly ash) is mixed with water and transported via pipes to a dumping ground, where a pump house sucks out the excess water and sends it back to the plant to carry more waste. In theory, the dumping grounds should be ponds, the ash weighted down by water, but too much ash and too little water means the coal cinders are often dry and easily transported by the wind. Parli Thermal Power Station generates 3,500 metric tonnes of such fly ash per day and the 5000 residents of nearby Dadahari Wadgoan Village were becoming sick of it coating their homes and lives.

The village residents signed many petitions. As Sarpanch, Shiavagi was involved in presenting them to both the Environment Department of Maharashtra and Mahagenco – the government-owned company who operate the plant. He says the recipients always promised something would be done, but no action was ever taken. Then, shortly before the protest, two women in the village passed away.

“They had asthma and breathing in the fly ash had made it worse,” says Shiavagi. “The doctor had told them to stay away from it but what could they do? After their deaths we wrote again to Mahagenco saying we believed they had died because of the fly ash, but again there was no reply and nothing changed.”

The breaking point came at the end of summer 2009. All doors and windows in Dadahari Wadgoan had to be shut against the constant onslaught of ash, which in the middle of July made living conditions unbearably hot. Despite the village’s proximity to the power station, like many rural communities their power supply is intermittent and fans would rarely be working. The school building had no electric light, so with the shutters closed it was too dark to teach.

A panchayat meeting was called, and it was agreed the situation couldn’t go on. A group of 10-15 men angrily suggested going down to the pump house. More and more began to agree with them and eventually a mob of 400-500 set out for the dump to take things into their own hands.

“The two local security guards ran away when they saw us coming,” recalls Shiavagi. “They must have informed the plant on their wireless radios, though, because soon two official security men showed up in a car. They had guns and started threatening us. Everyone was shouting. One of the guards asked what the hell we thought we were doing, and said he’d shoot us if we didn’t leave. This made a couple of the younger guys really angry and they grabbed the guns off the security guards, lost their heads a bit and then locked them in the temple in the village. Then we set the seats of their car on fire and burned it.”

The apathetic attitude of years was quickly reversed. Within hours the Chief General Manager of the power station arrived with a police envoy, and acquiesced to the villagers’ demands. The guards were released and no charges levied against the protesters. The next day, the plant employed 40 people to sprinkle the dump with water, shortly afterwards installing a small sprinkler system to wet the fly ash and prevent it blowing into the village. They also rooted 10,000 plants in the ash ponds to reduce the amount of blow-off.

For the moment, Shiavagi and the other residents are mollified, but they are waiting to see if the power station installs the larger sprinkler system they promised, once the rainy season can no longer be relied upon to help quell the ash.

“I’m glad we did it,” he reflects, standing amongst the pools of water on the ash pond. “At least we eventually got some kind of reaction.”

Night has fallen now, and the bright lights of the power station are shining orange in the distance. To our right, where Dadahari Wadgoan lies, there is nothing but darkness, as the village continues to have 10-15 hours of scheduled power cuts per day. For the moment, though, the residents are merely glad to be rid of the thick grey dust filling their homes. But for the communities who live near other dumping grounds – both of Parli and other Thermal Power Stations – there is no such respite.

Our next report highlights the Energy Injustice that exists in India. While the government continues to add lakhs of megawatts of generating capacity by building more coal-fired thermal power plants, the rural poor are being left in the dark. The majority of the electricity generated in centralised power plants goes to feeding the insatiable appetite of the cities, while villages must suffer many hours of powercuts, if they have an electricity connection at all. To compound their problems, it is the rural population who must suffer the social, environmental, and health-related problems connected to centralised energy generation. Greenpeace thinks the solution to this injustice lies with creating decentralised energy generation systems, powered by renewable energy – a shift which will finally allow development of the rural poor, while also helping us to avoid dangerous climate change.

Still Waiting – or Chirag Tale Andhera – will be released on Tuesday 17th November 2009.

In the first of a five-part series to mark the release of the report, we profile people living with the consequences of this energy injustice. Today – a family living in an unelectrified village in rural Karnataka.

Energy Justice for Rural Karnataka

The darkness that at night envelops unelectrified hamlets in Uttara Kannada District, Karnataka, hides many things. It hides the black soot deposits on the walls, built up from years of smoky kerosene use. It hides the black soot deposits in the people’s noses and lungs; their weakened eyesight from straining to see in the dim light of the oil lamps. It hides their seclusion and their lack of education, as it’s difficult to impossible to make visits or read after nightfall, so they just go to bed. But the most heartbreaking secret this darkness holds is the ageing faces of its captives, for the children of the hamlets are missing. Unable to study after dark in the dim light of the kerosene lamps, most have been sent away to stay with relatives in bigger, electrified towns and villages: a dark seam of separation running through families.

“We see our two children only once every six months, when they come and stay with us for a night,” says Sarojini Rama Naik, a resident of Vatehalla Hamlet in Mahime Village, Homavar Taluk. “Even then they find it difficult to be without electricity.” She leans against the doorway, the flickering lamplight throwing shadows across her face. “Of course I miss them, but they have to have an education.”

Sarojini and her husband, Rama Timma Naik, sign the yearly letters to the village panchayat requesting electricity; they even boycotted the last assembly election in protest, but still no connection has been made. Some thirty pylons were erected in the area a few years ago but their arms are still empty of the power-carrying cables. Rama doesn’t know why this is; he thinks it is because the thick forest that surrounds their hamlet means the cables are considered at too high risk from falling trees. The disparate nature of these rural villages could also be a factor: each hamlet would require a different set of expensive cables, but would connect only a handful of houses.

So Rama continues to travel to the nearby Gerusoppa town to collect kerosene, though their rural location means the 10km journey takes him the entire day, on which he must set other business aside. The Government subsidises three litres per month for each household: this is not enough for their needs, so Rama purchases more on the black market at a higher price. If they had an electricity supply he could increase his income not only by saving the time it takes him to travel, but he and his wife could also use the evenings to process the Areca nut they grow on their quarter acre of orchard. Sarojini would buy an electric grinder too, to save her the one-two hours a day she spends grinding spices in the giant granite mortar on the floor of the dim kitchen. All her housework is currently done by oil lamp: she’s had a cough for years. The UN estimated that people who rely on kerosene lamps and biomass stoves inhale the equivalent of two packets of cigarettes a day. Women and children – those who spend most of their time indoors – are the most affected. Two thirds of the women in India, China and Mexico with lung cancer are non-smokers.

To add to the incongruity of their situation, Rama and Sarojini live in the vicinity of two large hydel dams – the 55MW Linganamaki, and the 240MW Gerusoppa – but the electricity they generate is not distributed to the area’s residents. People in the village believe that all the electricity generated by the nearby dam goes to power the city of Bengaluru, and not their district.

“I remember when the dams were built when I was young, and my father saying we might get electricity,” says Rama. “Many of the surrounding villages have it. Why don’t we? It must be our bad fate. You learn to accept it.”

More incongruous still is the sight of a mobile phone dangling from a roof beam in the house, the pink plastic cover swinging dully in the shadowy porch. Missing their children, the couple bought the phone in an attempt to keep in some contact with their young son and daughter. Of course, they have no means to charge it, and so Sarojini spends a day each week travelling to Gerusoppa to connect it to a plug socket. As she texts her children by the dim amber light of the kerosene lamp, the small house in the middle of the woods suddenly seems very quiet, and very lonely.