On today’s Your Call One Planet Series, we’ll discuss a New York Times / Fuller Project investigation about human rights abuses in India’s Sugar Industry.
The investigation reveales that household-name companies and Indian politicians profit off a brutal system that forces children to work, pushes them into underage marriages and coerces women to get unnecessary hysterectomies to keep them working in the fields, unencumbered by menstruation or routine ailments.
Joining us will be Megha Rajagopalan, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative correspondent for the New York Times.
Then later in the show, we’ll discuss US imperial ambitions in Greenland. In his latest article In These Times, journalist and guest Adam Federman, reporting fellow with Type Investigations and author of “Fasting and Feasting: The Life of Visionary Food Writer Patience Gray,” writes that in recent years, both Democratic and Republican administrations have cast Greenland as central to U.S. security in the Arctic and squarely within America’s sphere of influence.
Tune in at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live at 10am PT. What comments or questions do you have for our guests? Call 866-798-TALK to join the conversation!
Solar panel technology is often touted as a solution for rural villagers in developing countries who need access to electricity. And certainly the panels, combined with batteries and energy efficient appliances and lighting, can be a solid, emission-free solution for areas too far away to connect to regional grids.
But what if these villagers don’t actually want the panels? That was the case in rural Rajasthan, India, when the national government tried to introduce subsidized microgrids. UC Berkeley researchers at the Energy Institute at Haas were there to study the program and described the source of the opposition:
Many villagers were holding out for “real” electricity. In some cases, local politicians had made election promises that a connection to the centralized grid was imminent. Legitimately, the Government of India has made truly impressive strides towards its promise to provide electricity access for all. Although the fine print of this pledge leaves many households in the dark, the promise of relatively cheap conventional grid power was enough to dissuade many potential microgrid customers.
Households also balked at the price of the Gram Power system. Recall that the Gram Power connection fee was approximately $20. To put this in perspective, the average income among households in the villages that adopted microgrids was around $110 per month. Also, the subsidized per kWh charge for grid power for poor rural customers is less than 5 INR. To cover expected costs, Gram Power’s per kWh charge was four times as high!
In sum, it proved very hard—and expensive—to compete with the promise of subsidized grid power.
Making matters worse, the microgrids that were deployed were subject to constant theft by villagers, and the people assigned to crack down on the thieves were often reluctant to do so because they lived with these individuals and didn’t want to create bad relations.
It’s a classic example of the common dysfunction with economic assistance. Affluent outsiders believe they already have a solution to meet the needs of the impoverished villager, and then are shocked when the solutions are rejected or don’t work as planned.
While solar technology has clear benefits, a better way to start is to ask locals what they want first, and then work to deliver on those requests. Otherwise, the process is backwards and prone to fail.
