HARNESSING RENEWABLE SOURCES OF ENERGY AS AN IMPORTANT TOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL VENTURE AND ALSO TO REDUCE THE DRUDGERY THAT MANY RURAL POOR WOMEN ARE FACING IN INDIA

摘要

There is a complete lack of entrepreneurship in the rural area. Whatever entrepreneurship has developed in the last 100 years or so has developed in the urban areas based on the availability of cheap energy, raw materials and transport etc. This has indirectly resulted in the complete neglect of the industries and technologies, which had helped the village communities for centuries. The village industries for a long time were depending on the crafts of potters, cobblers, oilmen, grain processors, carpenters, blacksmiths and various other artisans and craftsmen and women. All these industrial production and beautiful Indian handicrafts are dying and withering away for want of injection of new ideas, new technologies and new products. This is contributing to the massive and growing problems of unemployment and underemployment in the rural areas where 65% of the Indians live. India lives in its villages and Mahatma Gandhi was very right in saying that "if villages perish, India perishes too". The causes for this state of affairs are quite obvious. The village industries that had supported the whole community for centuries are disappearing, threatened by urban mass production. Primitive methods of agriculture can no longer support a population that shows a continuous and alarming rate of growth. The villages take their revenge by sending unemployed men and women flocking to cities, which live on their septic drainage. Most of the cities have not got enough housing and other amenities to support ever-increasing production and have become unmanageable. There is no hope for the less and workless people migrate from villages, and spend their days and nights on the pavements and on the streets or in miserable juggi jhopiries in the urban areas. The living standards of the vast masses of people are sinking steadily below the subsistence level. This is a hopeless situation and needs immediate attention and immediate remedies. Many programmes have been taken up to remove poverty. The new government has also taken up this programme as a top priority. The ultimate objective is that we must launch self-help techniques, which would start a process of progressive improvement depending upon the skill of the people and wealth of natural resources available to them. For this purpose, techno-goes beyond hardware and feasibility studies and market research.