Ethnographic Study | Maliya, Gujarat

Located in Gujarat. ANANDI is a NGO which has a group of people helping out and creating self-help groups for the small villages and communities. The communities and their houses are at least a kilometer far from the market. We can find stalls of fishes, prawns, and grocery shops in those areas.

Tea shops at Maliya use coal as the burning and heating source for making tea. Each of the tea shop uses one sack of coal for 4 days which costs them around 400 each sack. There were houses which were completely running on solar panel supply and few houses with no electricity but a single solar panel to charge their mobile phones and listen to radios.

Large number of wind mills were installed along the highway and the energy generated was sent to the industries instead of the villages and the houses who live nearby those locations. The land used for installing the wind mills are taken in lease from the farmers and village people. One of the major occupations was producing salt and agriculture (Bajra-Wheat –coriander etc.)

Solar panels were provided with subsidy ( 2Lakh worth- 8 panels --- for 80000 rupees ) for professions like salt pane work , where the salt water was pumped to the upper surface with dc pumps. These solar panel based water pumping happens till the rainy season. During rainy season people shit to agriculture as there is not much heat and sun.

There is a community of houses which totally operates on solar panels. These community of houses are mostly relatives of each other. Each house has two partitions. Each partition consists of one family. Each of the family is provided with 4 solar panels which are able to generate 400 watts of power. They are also provided with a large battery and a charge controller to store energy for the night. Each house has 5 CFL bulbs, two 12v BLDC fans and few homes have television also. Each family consists of 3- 7 members in a family. They also have cows, goats, pigeons and chickens. Each of the families have 2-4 mobile charging modules. Drinking water is only available at 2 km away from the village. Villages far from the sea shore have their own well.