The Hindu Business Line : Win-win ideas

This year, two Indian projects have won the internationally-acclaimed UNESCO-Daimler ‘Mondialogo Engineering Award’. The award, which is usually considered the ‘Engineer’s Oscar’, is for creating sustainable solutions for problems in developing countries.

Vikas Kumar from Jagannath Institute for Technology and Management, Orissa, and his American friend, won it for lighting villages in Orissa with low-cost solar lanterns; and Vaibhav Tidke of Mumbai University Institute of Chemical Technology and his Singaporean partner were honoured for devising a solar pond dryer for Maharashtra farmers to enable them to process agro-products.

The engineering contest, part of UN’s ‘Mondialogo Intercultural Dialogue and Exchange,’ is designed to involve student groups from a developing country with some other groups in a developed country. The objective is to find a technical solution that will provide a direct practical benefit to people in a developing country. Partner teams interact via the Mondialogo Internet portal where a virtual office has been set up.

Of 809 projects proposed by 3,200 engineering students from 89 countries, an international jury nominated 30 best projects for the final round. The teams led by Orissa’s Vikas Kumar and Patrick Walsh of the US and Mumbai’s Vaibhav Tidke and Veerappan Swaminathan of Singapore made it to the top ten in the final, each winning €20,000.

The thought process

More than a year ago, when Kumar and Walsh from the University of Illinois first discussed the solar lantern project for a village near Kendrappara in Orissa, the award did not figure in their scheme of things. “Patrick and I were in Kendrappara with a bio-diesel project initiated by Prof. Dhanada Misra of Jagannath Institute for Technology and Management. In the evening, we found that the entire village was glum in the absence of electricity. This prompted our search for a viable solution,” says Kumar.

“We found that LED (light-emitting diode) is the cheapest device. One LED takes one-sixteenth of one watt power,” explains Kumar.

“Later, Patrick went back to the US and we discussed online and over phone about the project. By January 2007, we created 65 solar lanterns,” he says. During this period, the duo came across Mondialgo and applied for it. The solar lantern, which costs Rs 950, is now in great demand in Rundevi, Rasaur and Pettikota villages in Orissa. “The solar lamps available in the market cost anywhere between Rs 2,000-3,000. But our product costs less than Rs 1,000 and it will come down to around Rs 650 when we mass produce it,” adds Kumar.

The second team comprised Vaibhav Tidke and Veerappan Swaminathan of the National University of Singapore. The energy-efficient solar pond dryer developed by them ensures longer shelf-life for farm produce. “Usually the shelf-life of agro products, especially fruits, is a week. The solar dryer pond guarantees eight-nine months for fruits,” says Tidke.

In India, where a high percentage of fruit crops are wasted every year due to poor food processing infrastructure, the solar pond dryer will have a significant economic impact, say Tidke and his classmate Darshan Mehta, another associate in the project. They are going to install the solar pond dryer in Bhogalvadi and Harali villages in Maharashtra.

Make popular

The UN is in the process of popularising these innovative engineering projects, the feasibility of which was verified by an international jury of scientists and technocrats.

“These promising young engineers are not only working for their own careers but are also putting their ideas, knowledge and, above all, a great level of social awareness into tackling problems in the poor regions of the world,” said Prof. Bharat Balasubramanian, Director of Group Research & Advanced Engineering at Daimler AG, who was one of the jury members.

Kumar and Tidke have a lot in common. They hail from villages and are first-generation graduates. Educated in local schools, both hold tightly to their rural moorings while climbing up the career ladder.

Something to cheer about for rural India.

More Stories on : Awards & Honours | Rural Development | People | Research & Development

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