[Stoves] MUST CHARCOAL BE A CAUSE FOR CONCERN?

[Anand Karve]

Dear Crispin,
it is a fact that people don't like to stay in a village and do farming. I
spent almost 3 months in Germany in 1999/20 and had many discussions with
people there.  The villages  in Germany are clean. They have running tap
water, electricity, a cinema house, a shopping mall, an inn, a good school,
a church, etc. and still people do not want to live in a village or work
on a farm. The Germans pay a heavy subsidy to farmers out of the simple
reason that they want to compensate the people monetarily, who are willing
to stay in a village and do farming. In most other countries, the Government
does nothing to improve the lot of farmers or to give them insentives to
stay on the farm. In India, the farmers have found lately, that they don't
even get brides. Framers don't get labour to toil on their farms,
andtherefore the family members have to do a lot of work in the hot sun. A
woman would prefer to live in a slum in a large city and work as a housemaid
than marry a farmer and be condemned to lead a harsh life working on a farm
and be without even the basic amenities like water, electricity or an LPG
stove.
A D Karve


On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 3:47 AM, Crispin Pemberton-Pigott <
crispinpigott at gmail.com> wrote:

> Dear Frank
>
> You know this is a very big issue among the stove promoters:
>
> >I'm thinking our customers are NGO like Shell and the like as they are the
> ones fronting the money.
> >They are the ones picking out the stove to distribute(?). I would think
> they would only want to
> >distribute a safe stove as defined by our (the West) standards because
> their reputation is at stake.
>
> Appearances can be everything. I don't need to dwell on it but Richard's
> technologies are to some too 'simple', shall I say? I refer to briquetting
> presses. The press Apolinario is using in Maputo is mindlessly simple. Yes,
> funders want to be seen to be bringing decent technologies to
> beneficiaries.
>
> My experience of Shell is they that are pretty laid back in the sense that
> they understand that things might not look snazzy or be high tech. However
> they do have an internal definition of what improvement is in their own
> eyes
> and there's nothing wrong with having an opinion, especially if you are
> paying and the money has to be accounted for to others who wanted some
> benefit delivered.
>
> There was in the old Transkei a programme of 'improvement schemes' which
> when they tried to roll it out (villagisation) in Pondoland, was resisted
> full force. People said, "We don't want to be improved! Take your
> 'improvement' somewhere else!"
>
> Moving people into a village before delivering schools and water was the
> plan. It was of course a disaster as people were now miles from their
> fields
> which were nearly abandoned in the places where villagisation was
> implemented. And the water didn't come.
>
> The plan was to deliver clean water and education. The result was iffy and
> the Pondos knew it. One man said, "If I send my children to school, they
> will teach them to hate rural life. Then they will grow up and move to
> town.
> In town there are many bad things and everyone is miserable. I don't want
> my
> children to be miserable. I don't want them to be 'improved' and have an
> unhappy life. They can stay right here and be happy. Take your school
> somewhere else."
>
> Outside people were paying for the schools, and toilets, and stoves, and
> books and so on. It was the outsiders who set the standards. Producing
> students who would be happy in a rural area was not on the list of
> products.
>
>
> Cecil Cook (who had a stroke yesterday and is fortunately stable)
> interviewed more than 3000 people for employment at the Transkei
> Appropriate
> Technology Unit in Umtata. Each was asked what they would really like to do
> for a living. Only 3 answered, 'Farming.'
>
> The Pondo man was at least partly right.
>
> Regards
> Crispin
>
>
>
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-- 
***
Dr. A.D. Karve
President, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute (ARTI)

*Please change my email address in your records to: adkarve at gmail.com *
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