June 26, 05 at Nainar Kuppam
On June 26, 2005 Professor Udipi Shrinivasa came to Nainar Kuppam. Professor Sultan Ismail, a keen environmentalist was a special guest. The occasion was mainly to hand over fibre glass boats as part of a tsunami relief programme. The tsunami of Dec 26, 2004 was indeed a major disaster that visited fishermen. But response to their suffering was also handsome. Boats and engines were pouring on them. In many villages -including Nainar Kuppam- there are more engines now than there were before the tsunami.
gniF began advocating energy self-sufficiency through the use of straight vegetable oils. There had been contact meetings at three villages. There was a discernible enthusiasm for the idea of growing one's own diesel. A small booklet carrying a biodiesel FAQ in Tamil, also helped deepen interest. But they were still slightly incredulous as to whether pongamia oil would indeed power their fishing engines.
The best way was to show them. Prof. Shrinivasa's organisation Sustainable Transformations sent a mechanic, Mr Chandrashekar from Bangalore on Jun 24 to rig up a couple of fishing engines to run on pongamia oil- one in Kari Kattu Kuppam and one in Nainar Kuppam.
June 26 became a landmark day at Nainar Kuppam: the villagers went overboard in their enthusiasm. They stopped all guests about a quarter kilometer from the village without quite saying why. We soon knew. A brass band struck a welcome and we were led in, in a robust civic parade. Welcome messages were scribed on the road and everyone was smiles and warmth.
At the village square, a street play got underway soon as the parade ended. gniF had been persuaded by Supraja to use folk theatre as the best way to communicate the biodiesel idea. Five cheerful youngmen scripted an engrossing 30 minutes based on the information in the Tamil booklet.
The play was a classic example of conveying information through fun. It wowed everyone. It lightly -but powerfully and entertainingly- explained ideas like peak oil, oil geo-politics , the coming energy crisis at the village level etc. and then went on to explain how using tree based non-edible oils - such as pongamia- can be a sustainable solution.
In the meeting that followed Prof Shrinivasa explained how use of pongamia oil as a diesel substitute is a proven idea. Prof Ismail explained the primacy of environment over all other assets we seek in life.
The highlight of the afternoon was of course the demonstration of a fishing engine running on pongamia oil. Two engines were set up side by side: one ran on petro-diesel and the other on bio-diesel. Fishermen went around staring at the engines. The aha-moment happened when they were encouraged to smell each exhaust. The exhaust from the pongamia engine smelt like a kitchen and rounded a lot of eyes in gleeful surprise.