In a country where 319 million people still live on less than Rs40, or about $1, a day, Dina Nath Tiwari believes that a gangly green shrub growing in the rural countryside can eradicate poverty and remove regional imbalances.
A former Planning Commission member, Tiwari headed the committee on biofuel development in 2002 to encourage cultivation of Jatropha curcas, a sturdy plant bearing oil-rich seeds, with wider possibilities of making biofuel if blended with diesel.
The committee report suggested forming a biofuel mission and funding a Rs1,500 crore demonstration project to counter rising oil prices and domestic energy demand. But the recommendations, made during the Bharatiya Janata Party’s rule, were not accepted by the current Congress-led UPA government.
Now, as oil consumption soars, crude oil prices near $100 a barrel and the government aggressively explores alternative energy sources and environment-friendly policies, a group of union ministers is expected to revisit jatropha this week.
By now, Tiwari has a track record to back up what his committee said some five years ago.
On a mission: The vice-chairman of the Chhattisgarh Planning Board says the jatropha cultivation programme in the state will lead to greater energy security and help improve the living standards of the poor by 2012.At a time when oil is nearing $100 a barrel, Tiwari’s idea of a biofuel revolution is generating interest in the government as it looks at alternative sources of energy.
On a smaller but meaningful scale, he has been able to implement his ideas in Chhattisgarh, where nearly half the population lives below the poverty line. Tiwari, now 71, serves as vice-chairman of the Chhattisgarh State Planning Commission Board.
“We are aiming this at the poor, who spend an average Rs1,500 every month on kerosene and diesel. We want to make them self-sufficient in energy, which can be used in irrigation pumps and electricity,” says Tiwari, who entered the forest service in 1960.
Chhattisgarh was the first state to announce a biodiesel policy with a jatropha planting initiative in fallow land and free distribution of 500 plants to every farmer. It has also announced a minimum support price of Rs6.50 per kg of seeds.
The state now operates the largest jatropha cultivation programme and, according to Tiwari, it will generate income, lead to greater energy security and push up people’s living standard above poverty margins by 20% in 2012.
Tiwari spent the first decade of his life in Mahatma Gandhi’s Sabarmati and Wardha ashrams to escape police harassment as his freedom fighter parents, Vishnu and Purnima Bhaghwan, went in and out of prison. He then went on to write two dozen monographs on plants and trees, and some 102 books that have been translated into 10 languages.
His 250-page book, Jatropha and Biodiesel, on how to engage village communities in the effort, has a message from former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and a foreword by Tata group chairman Ratan Tata.