Almost everybody who has been to China recently comes back highly
impressed with their development. The frenzied pace of construction
activity in Beijing, the infrastructure development for 2008 Olympics
Games and the general cleanliness of the city is highly impressive even
though China still continues to call itself a developing country!
Beijing looks like any other modern European or American city. Even the
air pollution on a cold November day was comparable to that in any
American or European city.
Similar is the story in other cities like Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing,
etc. Yet with all the impressive urban revival of China the rural areas
are in pretty poor condition and the urban - rural divide both
economically and socially is increasing day by day. This chasm is
leading to large-scale social unrest in rural areas and migration of
large populations to urban areas. Recently the episodes of farmers being
evicted from their lands and the land given to industries and builders
has created further unrest.
The Chinese authorities are very concerned about it and feel that to
contain this rural unrest it is necessary to create suitable
infrastructure in rural areas so that the fruits of rapid growth in
economy are also available to populations there. One of the ways to do
it is to provide modern energy to these areas.
The Chinese government claims that only 8% of the rural population has
no electricity. Contrast this with the number of 60% rural population in
India which is without electricity. This and other numbers regarding the
indicators of rural poverty in China are very suspect and generally the
government of China does not readily come forth with numbers which show
the state in bad light. This has always been the case with Chinese
statistics.
However the anecdotal evidence and ground realities reported by rural
workers suggest that the situation maybe quite alarming thus
necessitating the setting up of a very high powered group called Office
of National Energy Leading Group (ONELG) under the chairmanship of Prime
Minister Wen Jiabo. ONELG has been charged with the development of the
energy policy of China and rural energy forms a very major part of this
policy.
Chinese also want to learn about rural energy strategy from the
experiences of the countries round the world. Hence a one day high level
symposium was organized by ONELG together with United Nations
Development Program (UNDP) in Beijing in November. Five international
experts from Brazil, Zimbabwe, Bolivia, South Africa and India (this
author) were invited to advice and share their experiences with the
Chinese rural energy experts and senior government officials. The
conference was inaugurated by Mr. Xu Ding Ming the energy czar of China
and Vice Chairman of ONELG.
There is a great lesson to be learned from this for India. Firstly the
need to learn from international experiences and secondly to follow the
advice of experts. In India most of the time advice from experts is
ignored either due to political exigencies or just the laziness in not
doing due diligence. Though India was the first country in the world to
set up a Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources in 1990s, the
record in this area is quite dismal.
Anecdotal evidence also suggests that Chinese authorities are worried
that the present rate of stupendous economic growth may get a jolt if
there is social unrest in rural areas since they supply the cheap labor
for the industries. But whatever may be the reason once the Chinese
authorities decide to do something then they do it ruthlessly.
In that context I was taken aback by the remark of a senior Chinese
rural energy expert that in case the energy is not made available to the
rural population then we have the choice of shifting the rural
population to where the energy is! Such a demographic shift as a
solution to energy problem is not acceptable in a democratic country
like India though the construction of big dams do exactly that.
One of the major sources of energy for rural areas in China is coal.
China has a huge reserve of this material and is their largest energy
supplier both for urban and rural areas. However international and some
local environmental lobbies are pushing for reduction in its use and
ultimately banning it. The Chinese government is very wary of doing
anything like this and hence the use of coal for providing rural energy
needs for heating and cooking will continue for a long time to come.
Nevertheless they are also very keen to use renewable energy for rural
applications.
There is a need for India and China to work together in the area of
rural energy since the problems in these two countries are similar. Thus
in both countries the energy consumption per capita in rural areas is
nearly 100 kWh/year; both are agricultural countries where nearly 60-70%
of population are rural based; the quality of life in rural areas is
poor, there is lack of employment in these areas and presently the
farming is uneconomical.
Thus there should be exchange of knowledge and technologies of
successful projects in both these countries. For example the highly
successful work of wind energy and biomass-based power plants in India;
or the work on biomass gasification, coal energy utilization, and use of
high tech biogas plants in China should be shared by our two countries.
I saw a 1 MW extremely sophisticated biogas power plant attached to a
state of the art chicken farm near Beijing. Similarly this author
suggested the use of high technology like nanotechnology and
biotechnology for rural applications. At the same time our Institute�s
technologies on power generation from agricultural residues and the use
of sweet sorghum derived ethanol for cooking and lighting were very much
appreciated in the symposium. India can also learn from China their
ability to get things done in short time and economically. The
transformation of their old cities into modern mega cities and the
ability to produce high class products cheaply are some things to be
emulated by us.
Both India and China have a very talented pool of manpower in
Information technology (IT) and Biotechnology (BT) and this has brought
great economic boom to both countries. There is no reason why similar
manpower cannot be created for rural technology (RT). Hence I feel that
the future of our two great ancient civilizations will be powered by IT,
BT and RT.
In these times when India and China�s relationship is on the upswing I
think that there should be a high level exchange of scientists,
technologists and energy experts from both countries to work in the
areas of rural development. Unless and until we bring the rural
population of our countries in the mainstream of development and improve
their quality of life both of us will not be able to join the ranks of
advanced nations. If we do this then we would have improved one third of
mankind!
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The Chinese government claims that only 8% of the rural population has
no electricity. Contrast this with the number of 60% rural population in
India which is without electricity. This and other numbers regarding the
indicators of rural poverty in China are very suspect and generally the
government of China does not readily come forth with numbers which show
the state in bad light. This has always been the case with Chinese
statistics. 