Green Ideas can Make in India a Success

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Author – Tanmaya Dash

Eco-friendly-Make-in-India-2

The Indian government has kicked off the “Make in India” week to showcase the manufacturing prowess of the third largest economy in the world by purchasing power parity (PPP). Evidently, we expect to see a steady increment in foreign investments as about 60 countries are participating in the events. This week is being celebrated as part of Modi government’s Startup India Action Plan for emphasis the importance of start-ups’ contribution towards the growth of our country.

However, India is currently ranked at the 130th position among 189 countries in the World Bank’s survey on ease of doing business. DIPP secretary, Amitabh Kant stated the government is targeting to be among the top 50 within the coming three years. This is one of the foremost needs for becoming the world largest startup ecosystem (currently the third largest). The government has made starting a business easier by eliminating the minimum capital requirement and the need to obtain a certificate to commence business operations. However, there is still plenty of room for improvement as businesses struggle with numerous construction permits, tax payments and contract enforcement issues.

A country of 1.25 billion people should have no shortage of ideas to start independent ventures, but there are certain key aspects that need to be addressed for promoting entrepreneurship among students. The most prominent among them is our educational system. The gap in our education system has come under a lot of scrutiny in social media as well as among graduates from tier-one universities.

Educational institutions are currently focused on creating more job seekers rather than job creators. Entrepreneurship is not at all a primary focus for engineers and management graduates who pass out of colleges; rather it is about getting a secure job in either a multinational company or in the public sector.

The government can take a few steps in imbibing a culture of start-ups among Indian youth by promoting innovations and sustainable technologies that are being developed in colleges across the country. The initiative to showcase the most successful ventures from an institute inside the academic space will surely be a great boost for students to start working on their own ideas.

In fact, we observe there are more innovation and entrepreneurship drives by corporate houses today rather than the government. Some of the prominent innovation hunts are:

  • The Infosys Prize endeavors to elevate the prestige of science and research in India
  • Mahindra Group fosters innovation in fields such as solar power and driverless car with its ‘Spark the Rise’ initiative
  • ‘Innovators Race by Capgemini’ where technology and business meet sustainability
  • AICTE, DST and CII jointly organize India Innovation Initiative 2015
  • TiE – The Indus Entrepreneurs’ global program to nurture startups – TiE Young Entrepreneurs

Clean technology and renewable energy are two emerging sectors that can clearly help not only nurture entrepreneurship but also build an innovation platform for sustainable development. The rapid rise in e-commerce and mobile communications across India needs to be adequately supported by a massive increase in decentralized power generation in rural areas.

For example, if telecom towers located in remote areas are run by diesel gensets that need imported fuel, then that is not sustainable development. In contrast, micro grids of solar power that supply electricity to both rural households and telecom towers offers a win-win situation.Similarly electric rickshaws can not only reduce pollution in urban areas but also offer good employment to jobless youth.

Indian Railways adopting DRDO’s Bio-toilets innovation is yet another great example of providing clean toilets without polluting the environment. IIT Kharagpur faculty have innovated a microbial fuel cell technology for sewage treatment systems that can treat waste water as well as generate electricity. There are many such innovative green ideas that the government can promote under its Make in India initiative for nurturing entrepreneurship as well as ensuring sustainable development.

Tanmaya Dash is an energetic Mechanical Engineer who graduated from the prestigious IIT-Kharagpur to join Tata Steel as a Management Trainee in Jamshedpur. With a keen interest in space technology, he is involved in the activities of the Space Technology Students Society. Tanmaya was part of the team that conducted the country’s first space technology festival – the National Students’ Space Challenge. Apart from space technology and astrophysics, he has interests in developing business ventures in clean technology and renewable energy. He also writes articles on various topics and dabbles with poems as well!

4 COMMENTS

  1. Hello Tanmaya,

    Amazing piece and a very informative article and well argued. I would like to add the following aspect to further highlight the challenges of the work force coming out of institutes every year.

    Our education system is very comprehensive, details in many aspects and is for the masses. True and rightly made in context of the era of the 1980 – 1990. We are no longer looking to produce farmers by the dime and dozen. We still need them, but they are limited number of farm lands which they can work in and the rest will have to look for other opportunities. If it wasn’t for the BPO boom we would have had a hoard of eligible graduates but no opportunities. BPO gave our economy the breathing space which was badly required.

    Private Institutes have started blooming and we find the gap which was becoming more clear in our K 12 education being filled by the Undergraduate and Graduate level private educational institutes. But they come at a price not all can afford.

    So the majority still completing their K 12 with aspiration becoming a farmer has aspirations in making it big in the private industry. There is a huge mismatch between the current demand and the quality of the supply. The vocational training institutes are helping cover the gap but all are towards meeting the demand from the service industry and their subsequent supply.

    The demand and supply which is being managed by the available resources are all towards service centric and nothing to do with leadership or people qualities who excel in asking the Why questions.

    We still are missing the Why ?

  2. Hello Suhail,

    You have raised a very valid point. The entire idea of making a transition from a service centric country to a manufacturing country is based on this attitude of asking the why questions. The K 12 education system in its present state is creating more job seekers than job creators. The attitude that we have developed of “doing what we are told” is also not helping. This is why need disruptions and disruptors rather to change the monotony which has set towards getting into the service sector (a GDP contribution of over 50%).

    As far as the producing farmers and increasing aspirations the general populous are concerned, the change can directly be attributed to better availability of basic education. During the pre-independence era, most of the education that was available was either too costly or too rare. So the only opportunities of learning any skills was limited to the household or the neighborhood. This lead to the tradition of a farmer’s son becoming a farmer and looking after their family lands.

    However as education began to spread to the rural parts of the country this trend was disrupted. Then we tried to a basic education to as many people as we can reach thereby increasing the opportunities they have and giving them new aspirations in the process. Though the condition of education is nowhere near optimal in many parts of India and the literacy rate is far from what we would liked but things are still improving and we have come a long way.

    The present situation demands that we have another such disruption in order to enhance the ability of people to ask “Why”. The more we are able to do so, the more problems would be defined for us to solve, and the more problems that we can define the more we would give room for innovation to find the appropriate solutions for them.

  3. Sewage Treatment में कारगर सिद्ध हो चुकी। हमारी टेक्नोलॉजी का उपयोग सभी तरह के जल स्रतों को प्राकृतिक तरीके से साफ़ करने के लिए किया जा सकता है। जानकारी के लिए सम्पर्क करें।
    Rejuvenation of the India’s Drains Ponds Lakes & Rivers by Accelerated Bio-Remediation thru insitu deployment of Nano Biotech Product, Invented Developed and Made in India to Accelerate Sh.Narendra Modi’s Make in India Initiative
    https://www.ecoideaz.com/green-directory/techair-mart-com-biological-waste-water-technology/

  4. DROUGHT LESS WORLD -WATER SUSTAINABILITY FOR GLOBE -24 X 7 WATER SUPPLY BY USING EXISTING RESOURCES AND SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE METHOD OF GROUND WATER RECHARGE
    Sidramappa Shivashankar Dharane
    SVERI’s College of Engineering Pandharpur, Maharashtra,India
    dr.dr.sidramappa@gmail.com
    Mob-919890283390

    Abstract:-24 x 7 water supplies are possible by using existing resources. The small supply of water in the bore wells can be used effectively. The existing pumps can also be used with one speed regulator to adjust the capacity of pump/speed as per the supply of water in the bore wells which will maintain the continuity of flow; thereby the main principle of getting maximum water from the water scare bore can be achieved i. e. Q outlet ≤ Q inlet. All the bore wells which are not in use because of their small supply of water will also start to function as per their capacities of inlet discharge. This concept of using speed regulators to submersible pumps is a new innovation and because of this we can make use of existing resources for effective water supply across the globe. This innovation really serves the globe.
    The simple and effective method of ground water recharge is to improve the ground water table is to take the small depth of bore wells say 50 feet across the rivers, small streams , nallas at different sections and completely filled it by filter material like pebbles and sand . Because of this method of recharge of ground water level will come up at faster rate and it is cost effective.
    Key words: 24 x7 water supplies, bore wells, speed regulator, existing resources

    Introduction
    The whole world is facing the problem of effective water supply because of summer season and drought and so many other reasons. In rural and urban area there are so many tube wells (bore wells), if we adjust the pipe diameter and capacity of pump and introducing one regulatory valve at outlet, we can adjust the outlet discharge from the bore well less than or equal to the inlet discharge i. e. as per supply of water in the tube wells (bore wells). It leads to 24 X 7 water supply in some area and even it is effective in draught. Also it is more effective for irrigation just by constructing small water tanks or by changing methods of irrigation like sprinkler or drip. By using this small principle (outlet discharge less than or equal to inlet discharge ) we can make use of existing bore wells (tube wells) which are not in use because of their less supply of water and save lot of money of nation and can serve nation more effectively.
    By the use of adjusting nozzle/regulatory valve (which we are using for vehicle washing) we can adjust the yield from the bore wells as per supply, which gives the continuous supply of water, as per the supply of water from ground in the tube wells and which can be used in any corner of the world. In this case it is not necessary to adjust the capacity of pump and diameter of pipe, and the same existing pipe and pump can be used.
    India is agriculture country and facing the great problem of water for various purposes though so many big projects are coming to fulfil the need. Even though it is not possible to supply the water in every corner of the country by means of big projects only. But if we make of use of existing resources up to its optimum use, then it is possible to supply the water effectively in every corner of the world. The one of the existing major resource is a bore well/ tube well. The bore wells which are not in use because of its small supply of water can be used effectively by sound technical knowledge. If this small supply of water is made available effectively then defiantly 24 x 7 water supplies is possible with minimum investments and saves billions of Rs of the nation. In India the numbers of bore wells are not functioning effectively because of its small supply of water. The supply of water in the bore wells varies because of less rainfall, summer, draught etc. this small supply of water can be used by designing the capacity of pumps and pipe diameter for minimum discharge and one regulatory valve can also be used to maintain the continuity of flow. But because of this when the inlet discharge in the bore wells becomes more in rainy season we cannot make use of excess water. And if we design the capacity of pump for maximum inlet discharge there will be fluctuation of water when the inlet supply becomes less in summer and draught and the continuity of flow cannot be maintained which leads to less availability of water for use. So to make use of optimum water, the capacity of pump and diameter of pipe should be such that outlet discharge should be less than or equal to the inlet discharge which maintains the continuity of the flow. But here also the inlet discharge will not remain constant because of more or less rainfall, Season, droughts etc. And also it is not possible to change the pump and pipe diameter as per the inlet discharge. But in such case the continuity of flow can be maintained by using one regulatory valve which can be operated manually up to some extent.
    The new approach to adjust the capacity of pump as per the inlet discharge plays very important role for effective water supply and economy as every time it is not possible to change the capacity of pump as per inlet discharge. In this case the capacity of the pump should be designed for maximum discharge and one speed regulator can be used to adjust the capacity of the pump/speed so that we make use of maximum and minimum inlet discharge so that every bore well will start to function as per their capacity. This approach of designing new pump along with regulator to adjust the capacity of pump/speed leads to effective water supply and economy.

    In short there are four stages to get maximum quantity of water from any water scare bore wells are as below
    1. Design the capacity of pump as per inlet discharge.
    2. Design the pipe diameter.
    3. Use the regulatory valve at outlet.
    Use one speed regulator to adjust the outlet discharge as per inlet discharge.
    The country is facing the great problem of water supply for various purposes. Day by day because of less rainfall, summer and drought the ground water level is going at deeper level. If we take the small depth bore well across the rivers, small streams , nallas at different sections and completely filled it by filter material like pebbles and sand . Because of this method of recharge of ground water level will come up at faster rate and it is cost effective.
    Design :-
    1. Take the small depth bore wells across or sides of rivers , streams , nallas of approximately 50 feet.
    2. Fill the drilled bore wells completely by filter material like pebbles and sand.
    3. Pebbles are filled at lower level and at top the sand will be filled.
    4. The coarse material like pebbles at bottom level and finer filter material at top level can be maintained.
    Salient Features and Conclusions
    1. Effective 24 x 7 water supply
    2. Water can be made available in any corner of the country with minimum investment.
    3. Existing bore wells which are not in use can be used effectively.
    4. Deeper bore wells can be automatically avoided and thereby water table can be maintained at higher level.
    5. Saves billions of Rs of the nation for major projects.
    6. Overall economy and development can be achieved.
    References
    1.Dharane S.S. and Patil V. V. “By using Adjusting Nozzle or regulatory valve 24×7 Water Supply by using Existing Resources”, International Journal of Innovations in Engineering and Technology (IJIET), ISSN: 2319 – 1058, Volume 3 Issue 3 February 2014”, pp 134-135.
    2.Dharane Sidramappa Shivashaankar and Patil Raobahdur Yashwant, “By Adjustable Capacity of Pump 24 X 7 Water Supply By Using Existing Resources”, International Journal of Civil Engineering
    And Technology (IJCIET), Volume 5, Issue 6, June (2014), pp. 87-88.

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