Barefoot College takes big strides to Paris

Anticipating the high-visibility global diplomacy during the Paris climate talks, India has decided to project “Barefoot women solar engineers”, an initiative of Sanjit “Bunker” Roy, as a global success story crafted in India.

Official sources told The Hindu on Friday that Mr. Roy’s initiative qualified to be projected in Paris as it was “innovative south-south cooperation at its best”.

As part of the Indian team at the climate dialogue, Mr. Roy would narrate on December 1 the story of how hundreds of women from the least developed countries had formed a strong international network of clean energy propagators through south-south cooperation.

This is the second time in a month’s time that Mr. Roy’s idea of “barefoot solar engineers” will be projected on a global platform. The decision to highlight “Barefoot women solar engineers” in Paris comes after the India-Africa Forum Summit, during which Mr. Roy’s work was showcased as an Indian community-level clean energy success story. The decision to showcase it was an outcome of the India Technical Economic Cooperation programme of the Union External Affairs Ministry, which was launched in 2008.

Under the programme, selected grandmothers and mothers from different rural parts of the world are brought to the Barefoot College in Tilonia, Rajasthan, who are trained within six months to electrify their native communities under the care of a group of Indian rural electricians and engineers. The chief component of this initiative is to project solar and sustainable energy which benefits the lives of impoverished women in the least developed countries.

“The women from those countries are trained in building rural electronic workshops and fixed solar systems which are made of durable Indian items,” Mr. Roy told The Hindu after the government’s decision to project the Barefoot grandmothers model at the Paris climate talks. The elderly women become agents of transformation for their communities following the training.

Mr. Roy, a former squash champion and alumnus of Doon School, shot to fame due to his social work in Tilonia where he mixes basic engineering with a communitarian approach. He spent some time in Bihar in 1965 witnessing a famine which changed his life. He started the Barefoot College in an abandoned TB sanatorium in Tilonia of Ajmer district of Rajasthan in 1972. Over the years, Tilonia has become the base of the clean energy warriors of Barefoot College.

Setting an example of south-south cooperation, the Ministry sanctioned funds in 2014 for setting up Barefoot Women’s Vocational Training Centres across sub-Saharan Africa. Barefoot College has produced 270 solar engineers for 39 African countries. Mr. Roy is hopeful that though less discussed in current global diplomatic environment, the idea of South-South cooperation will once again surface in Paris on December 1.