Mines Magazine Turns 100 - the Timothy and Bernadette Marquez ...

ProfileAlumniFast ForwardProspering by Degrees“How is this going to be usefulfor the village?” Durga PrasadKar’s father would ask as his soncontinued to add to a portfolioof academic qualifications.Kar MS ’02, PhD ’10 holds anengineering degree and an MBAfrom universities in India, a postgraduatediploma in electricpower earned in Norway, and amaster’s and PhD in economicsfrom Mines.It wasn’t until he got to Goldenthat Kar figured out the answerto his father’s question. He wasstudying the economics of theelectric grid, the efficiency offree markets and emerging solartechnologies, when he finallyrealized how his academic workcould be applied to village life inrural India where he grew up.“I thought, the problems ofrural India—where villages haveno reliable source of electric power—can be reversed by usingrenewables and market competition,” says Kar.In 2003, just two years after beginning his doctoral program,Kar and his wife, Shreemayee, founded Alternative DevelopmentInitiative for Rural Engagement (ADIRE), a nonprofit aimed atimproving the lives of the rural poor in India through appropriatetechnology, renewable energy and local capacity building. Aroundthe same time he also changed his PhD thesis to a comparison ofthe costs of the government-subsidized rural electric grid in Indiawith off-grid solar photovoltaic generation.“India has over 600,000 villages with 700 million people, twothirdsof whom lack access to electricity and clean cooking fuel,”says Kar. “Many of them lack basic necessities, such as roads,access to clean water, even mosquito nets. These people are sopoor, and the electricity they can access is so unreliable, there areno income-generating activities available to them. This leads themto leave the village and migrate to the cities, where they live inslums and consume more fossil fuel.”Kar believes that rural access to small-scale, reliable andrenewable energy is one key to slowing rural to urban migration.The per-person demand for electricity is much lower in ruralareas than in urban ones, and can be met locally from renewablesources at a lower cost than expanding the grid, Kar adds. Notonly does this enable more people to remain in their villages,carbon footprints are also reduced.ADIRE began its work in a small village in Orissa, a poorClockwise from top left: Kar speaks about microfinance opportunities;without a reliable electrical grid, technology use depends onphotovoltaics; Kar discusses alternative water supplies with hisuncle, Madhab Dashstate in eastern India, but has since expanded to othervillages, with initiatives in health and hygiene, education, skillstraining, microfinancing and renewable energy generation.In an impoverished area of one village, they built a brandnew solar-powered school that is also used as a skills-trainingcenter for adults. Villagers staff the school and maintain thesolar technology, as well as the laptops, DVD players and LEDprojectors.ADIRE has become a family business: Kar and Shreemayeetravel to the area annually, where even their daughters getinvolved by teaching literacy, English language and dance. Duringthe rest of the year, Shreemayee manages school, microfinanceand production activities from their home in Green Bay,Wisconsin. Kar’s mother helps out with various projects from hercommunity in India. Kar’s father died in 2006 aged 83, but untilshortly before the end of his life, he was going house-to-housecollecting data for Kar’s thesis.Just before this issue of Mines magazine went to press, Karwas awarded his PhD. While it is the greatest achievement of hisacademic career, attaining it has been much more than an academicexercise. “I used to tell my father, ‘No one person can makea change,’” says Kar, recalling how he’d sometimes respond whenhis father questioned him about his protracted education. But Karis proving himself wrong, which is a good thing for more than onethousand families that ADIRE has touched so far in rural India.—Anne Button46 Fall/Winter 2010