沙漠研究 22-1, 135 -138 (2012 )"ICAL 1 / DT X"

Journal of Arid Land Studies－Refereed Paper－Appropriate Technology Requirement and Impact Projection for Rural Womenin Arid Region of India
Shweta SHARMA1,3), Sarla MALAVIYA2), Sangeeta SINHA*3), and Toshinori KOJIMA4)
Abstract: Desert and arid area ecology preserve nature’s unexplored treasures. However, in past few decades, global climaticcondition has constantly eroded their ability to buffer and cope stresses conditions. Their vulnerability has increased as theircustodians, a very sparse population, have been slowly and steadily migrating from these areas. The most vulnerable section of thesemigrating populations in slums of cities is women and children. Since these areas are usually far away from urban centers,developmental costs have deterred integrated planning initiatives. Hence, it is very important to assess the rural structure in theseareas and select appropriate technological intervention from sociological and gender point of view. In this paper, three major areas
have been included, (a) microfinance, (b) energy, and (c) information technology. On the basis of surveys in three representativevillages and interaction with rural women, appropriate technology have been marked, which may be introduced for the development.
Results indicate that women’s perspective is quite different. Off-grid sources of energy, enhanced afforestation effort, and ICTintervention are more important from female’s perspective against living condition, entertainment, mobile communication andeconomic growth.
Key Words: Appropriate technology, Arid areas, Sociological impact, Women drudgery

1. Introduction
Global climate concern, burgeoning population, and energy
related issues have attracted researchers towards deserts andarid areas. Deserts offer unique opportunity to understandcomplex climatological phenomenon. At the same time, italso provides unique opportunity for environmental mitigation
by creating carbon stock (afforestation) and a base for futureenergy supply (very large scale Photovoltaic applications).
Nevertheless, preserving unique ecosystem of desert and arid
areas – home to rare species of flora and fauna - has been also achallenge, due to mass migration of native people, who havebeen custodian of these. This needs a developmental strategy
to provide them appropriate technology and developmentalsupport especially in rural areas.
Agriculture still takes up a significant proportion of ruralactivities. However, for women, agriculture is not a questionof mere production as research on rural livelihoods suggests(Bebbington, 1999). In order to understand rural structure, abroader context of the social and cultural embeddings of theiractions should be taken into account. In rural development
issues, often, system analysis, actor-oriented approach,actor-network approach, political economy and post
structuralism dominates (Cloke, 1997; Kronert et al, 1999;
Little, 1999; Whatmore, 1999). The ecosystem approach
focuses on the calorific obsession, ignores of historical factors,
neglects the role of individuals, and use hypothetical orcase-specific boundary definition (e.g. Brossier, 1989;
Duivenboden, 1995). Studies based upon actor network
theories (ANT) (Clark and Murdoch, 1997) linkages all
involved units to give the composition and shape of rural
networks. By the use of ANT it is possible to analyze
network compositions and how these gain strength (Murdoch,2000). However, these have proved to be case studies rather
than understanding the use of rural space in general. Rural
areas continue to follow their own stubborn logics of change
and stasis. The limits and possibilities in developing countries,
especially in arid areas, are imposed by the structures ofeconomy, ecology and sociology.
The relations between practice and values of rural actors arevery important. ‘Practice’ is actions related to economic
activity carried out by individual actors, and ‘Values’, on theother hand, are traditions, thoughts, and beliefs. Althoughthese often are socially embedded, the focus of this research
paper is females as an individual actor. All forms of externalintervention necessarily enter the existing life-worlds of theindividuals and social groups affected, and in this way are
mediated and transformed by these same actors and local
structures. Rural sociology and natural resource management
along with motives, values, preferences of the females in rural
set up is extremely important in decision making.
Earlier, the expansion of large-scale urban industry wasbelieved to create new wage employment opportunities thatwould draw labor out of the unproductive subsistence* Corresponding Author: prof.ssinha@gmail.com
CREER, P.O. Box – 5, Muzaffarpur – 842001, Bihar, India
1) Department of Sociology, Dravidian University, Srinivasavanam, Kuppam, India

3) Centre for Renewable Energy and Environmental Research, Muzaffarpur, Bihar, India

2) Department of Sociology, L.N.Mithila University, Darbhanga, Bihar, India

4) Department of Materials and Life Science, Seikei University, Tokyo, JAPANagricultural sector into remunerative wage employment.
However by the 1970s it had become apparent that thestrategy was not, with few exceptions, achieving this goal. It
was in this context that more emphasis was placed on informal
sector, comprised of self-employed microenterprises. The
need to provide credit to fund informal sector activities wasstressed. The term ‘microenterprise’ refers to small businesses
owned and operated by poor people or groups of poor people
with the support of sponsoring organizations. The provision offinancial resources to poor communities was the most important
external input to achieve this goal. It was in this context that
small-scale microfinance and microenterprise activities emergedin 1970s.

2. Microfinance and Rural Women
Development should be viewed as a multi-dimensional
process involving major changes in social structures, popular
attitudes and a national condition of life from unsatisfactory tosatisfactory. In arid areas of developing countries, massmigration of able labour force from rural to urban areas is amajor problem. It leaves behind women, children and old age
people. Rural development means greater involvement ofrural women, who have hardly any credit or means of finance.
Hence, micro credit, microfinance and micro entrepreneurshipwith women as focus remain the only hope to initiate ruraldevelopment. These can be taken in the greater context ofglobal warming, directed to carbon sequestration such as,giving right on byproducts and timber value of trees planted on
public land and cared by rural women; or, providing
microfinance for greater accessibility to green energy for rurallighting and cooking; or simply employment and development
related initiatives.
International donors such as USAID initiated Small CapitalEnterprise Sector (PISCES), Assistance to Resources
Institutions for Enterprise Support Project (AIRES) to financethe earliest initiatives. Grameen Bank served more than 2
million members living in 41,000 villages in Bangladesh andhad disbursed more than $3 billion in loans (Jurik, 2005).
Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC),
Foundation for International Community Assistance (FINCA) in
Costa Rica etc. are similar examples. Poor women arerepresented among the owners and operators of these enterprises
and may become the primary recipients of micro credit.
Women comprise the vast majority of the members ofmicrofinance and microenterprise programmes in the GlobalSouth. This is because women are the most needy andvulnerable and that the empowerment of women has beensometimes made the major goal of these programmes.
Women are also specifically targeted because of their

willingness to participate and stronger commitment. It is also
widely accepted that women participating in these programmes
have indeed been empowered and that their status has improved.
They have also strengthened cooperative relationships andmobilized social capital among peer lending groups. For theseand other reasons, many development policy-makers andscholars commend these programmes and believe that they havea useful role to play in a wider, sustainable economic and social
development strategy designed to eradicate poverty.
The survey showed that the incomes of households engaged
in microenterprise activities increased more rapidly than others.
By raising the incomes of even a modest number of low-income
families, the demand for goods and services increases, and that
this stimulates local production and other economic activities.
Increased business activity also creates new employment
opportunities, as successful businesses expand and require
additional workers.

3. Energy and Rural WomenEnergy poverty continues to adversely affect education,productivity, health and safety of 1.6 billion people in thedeveloping world, 70% of them are women and girls.
Increasing the use of energy or utilizing efficient form ofenergy and/or energy services helps in reducing poverty
substantially. Rural areas in general and arid rural areas inparticular cover a broad segment of the population. If it is tobe improved beyond subsistence economy, minimum access toenergy services must be ensured.
However, merely
introducing cheap, easily available modern energy foreconomic activity is not enough to ensure socioeconomicprogress. Other factors are also crucial. Its utility lies infacilitating human development. The energy sector has strong
links with poverty reduction through income, health, education,
gender, and the environment (Saghir, 2005). In arid areas,
women needs to be focused since 90% of the energy
requirement is in for household sectors. In this paper
technology intervention in cooking and lighting needs are onlycovered.
3.1. Cooking
The fuel source in rural areas in India is shown in Figure 1.
In arid areas, the fuel sources used by households are still fuelwood, crop residues, and dung. Because cooking requires thelargest amount of household energy, traditional fuels dominate
the aggregate energy consumption for typical rural households.
Gathering fuel wood and dung takes ‘time’, which could be
devoted to more productive activities such as farming. As
trees disappear, fuel wood has to be sought further and furtheraway. Besides, using dung and crop residues as a fuel reduces

Firewood and chips (75%)

(a)
(b)

(d)
(c)

(a) - No arrangement(1.3%) (c) - LPG (8.6%)(b) - Coke and coal (6%) (d) - Dung cake (9.1%)

Fig. 1. Percentage distribution of household by primary source ofenergy in rural areas of India.

the amount available for use as a fertilizer for growing crops.
Moreover, most biomass need to be collected in large quantities.
They are a highly inefficient means of cooking compared withfuels such as liquid petroleum gas (LPG). A kilogram ofwood, for example, generates ~1/10th of the useful heat forcooking delivered by a kilogram of LPG. Direct combustionof biomass also damage health since smoke contains carbon
mono oxides and several carcinogenic gasses besides excessive
levels of shoot. Due to this chronic respiratory diseases arecommon among women in rural areas. Technologicalintervention in terms of solar thermal and biogas plants is very
important in rural areas.
Jatropha with appropriatetechnological intervention has immense potential to be themajor energy source in arid areas in future not only for cooking
but also for bio-diesel.
3.2. Lighting
Lighting by kerosene lamp is not only expensive but also
remains a major source of health problems for rural women.
Electricity from diesel generators typically costs around$0.30/kWh and light from kerosene can cost the equivalent at$20/kWh. Even with recent advances in solar technology thatmakes electricity affordable to the poor (no transmission line,
no diversion to big cities etc.), there has not been widespread
distribution and implementation in rural communities which
are most afflicted with energy poverty. A technology
gender-gap that excludes women from participating in thetechnologically based solution of solar energy means that
adoption of the technology will be slow and will be overly
dependent on outside agents for implementation.
Advances in solar lantern based on white LEDs have been
phenomenal in recent years. Twelve of the 16 projects thatwere awarded the Development Marketplace (DM) grant byWorld Bank in May 2008 under its initiative, ‘Lighting Africa’Fig. 2. Average Cost of lighting (1) before and (2) after introductionof WLED systems in rural areas per day.

use LED-based lighting products powered by solar Photo
Voltaic (PV) application. In Africa rural community preferredsolar lanterns for lighting. “Lighting a Billion Lives”
initiative is being implemented in selected villages in India.
Solar lanterns are found to be popular among users if these are
made available on a daily basis at small amounts of money
equivalent to the household’s expenditure on kerosene andcandles. Figire 2 shows reduction in expenditure due toWhite Light Emitting Diodes (WLED) based system.
Households that were using, on an average daily basis, twowax candles at a cost of Rs.2.50 each, found the daily rental
charge of Rs.3 cheaper. This rent was also found affordable
by house holds using about 4 litres of kerosene per monthbought at a market price of Rs.28 per litre (Chaurey andKandpal, 2009). However, for below poverty line households
that are eligible to procure subsidized kerosene of up to 3l permonth at a unit price of Rs.11per litres, the rental of solar
lantern was found to be unaffordable. Technologicalintervention for creating variable intensity WLED systems withcentral charging facility using fee-for-service is most suited inarid rural areas. Besides, surveys indicate that in very poor
segment, individual model with three sets of lights of 0.3 Watteach and a module of 5 Watt will suit most. This system
known as 1 Watt system is introduced in Nepal hilly areas andhelped in educating people for Operation and Maintenance sothat they could shift to higher intensity WLED system at a laterstage depending upon their requirement.

4. IT and Rural Women
One of the most important preconditions for the full andcomprehensive implementation of sustainable development is
the need for a sustainable information society. The world has
become a global village where people from one place learn
about happenings in many other places over the globe. Itwhich have witnessed large scale mass migration by ablelabour force to urban areas, technology intervention should be
women centric. Appropriate technology must be based upon
availability of finance and renewable energy with ICT support.
Last year, monumental changes were marked inincorporating women’s perspectives and gender concerns in thenegotiating texts on climate change. Similarly in arid areas,
the need of advancing women’s participation should berecognized for development related intervention and newtechnology introduction.

80
urban density
total density
rural density% age

60402001999

2001

2003
Year

2005

2007

References

Fig. 3. Penetration of mobiles in rural and urban areas.

allows countries to leapfrog stages of economic growth bybeing able to modernize their production systems and increase
their competitiveness faster than in the past. The mostnoteworthy example is that of the Asian Pacific economies.
Information and Communication Technologies along withtraditional mass media reduce the burden of traveling andexploitation. Dissemination of information has made it easy
for business from a remote area, learning process, health issues
and adaptation to new development with least strain.
Rural women hardly access to market and are often duped
even by their family members. The penetration of evenmobile technology in rural areas is negligible (Fig. 3).
Women have practically no access. Simple access to
information technology will provide them insight into themarket will change their lives, as they will know when andhow to sell their products and that too at what cost. This canbe achieved by small self sustainable Rural Information
Technology (IT) kiosk. An experiment in rural areas of hillside Nepal, such IT kiosk reduced the middle man’s marginand increased the profit of rural women growing vegetables formarket in Kathmandu by approximately 200%.
Introduction of new and appropriate technology in arid
areas needs three components - (a) Renewable energy poweredsystem, (b) Internet availability and support, and (c) Facility ofknowledge dissemination in local language.

5. Conclusion
The main ingredients of development are the people
themselves who should state their development goals for theirown communities, and how these development goals will beachieved. The technologies can be part of these strategic toolsto be used towards the achievement of the development goals.
Nevertheless, it is evident that in remote areas and rural areas,

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