Table of Contents
Smart Metering
- Draft Electricity (Rights of Consumers) Rules 2020: every new electricity connection will come with a smart prepayment meter or a prepayment meter.
- Any exemption to this should be approved by the State Electricity Regulatory Commission.
- Read Smart Meter, remotely, once in a month. Representative should read other prepayment meters once in 3 months.
- The draft also recognises consumer as a prosumer if he generates renewable energy.
- The distribution licensee will create an online facility on which the prosumer can register and claim compensation amount.
An alternative jobs and skill strategy for India
- The British described India as an ocean of trees.
- Tree cover was nurtured by village and tribal communities.
- Dadabhai Naoroji: To organise the drain of India, the British destroyed these community organisations and took over forest land as State property.
- Goa, therefore, remained an ocean of trees till 1961, attracting hordes of tourists.
- To this day, the gavkari, or “communidad” organisation continues to bravely hold on to Goa’s natural heritage.
- Gadchiroli – at over 70%, it has the highest level of tree cover in Maharashtra
- Proper implementation of Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights and provision of FRA
- Thousands of villages being assigned lakhs of hectares
- CFRs are granted from 2009
- It has led to skill development and community-based employment.
- Capable tribal leadership + competent and honest officials
- Pachgaon, a village in neighbouring Chandrapur district, has been assigned CFR rights over 1,000 hectares.
- The gram sabha asked each family to submit 5 rules regarding management of forest resources and other civic affairs.
- These were then discussed in a meeting over two days and 115 rules were unanimously accepted.
- The entire community now abides by these 115 rules.
- These include regimes regarding the harvest of bamboo and other minor forest produce, regular patrolling of CFR areas and sharing of responsibility in sorting and auctioning bamboo.
- The villagers used pluck tendu leaves for contractors
- Involved setting fire to parts of the forest, which the people deemed undesirable.
- Tendu trees are now producing an abundance of fruit.
- This fruit is in high demand also.
- The wages for bamboo harvest were 3 times what contractors paid.
- 2015: net profit of Rs 35 lakh from the sale of bamboo
- This money is invested in organising forest and village development works which provide year-round employment.
- The lessons from villages such as Pachgaon must reach all other CFR-holding villages.
- Maharashtra’s tribal development department sponsored a special five-month training programme in the field at Mendha-Lekha, the first village to win CFR rights in 2009.
- Kudumbasree – engaged primarily in activities related to food production, processing and restaurants.
- Large tracts of farmland are fallow in Kerala
- Reason: costs of chemical inputs and labour prohibitive
- Kudumbasree groups take such lands on lease and make them productive.
- They can afford to do so because, without alternative employment, their members accept lower wages.
- Not chemical usage – low cost – pesticides free ecosystem
- Empowering communities through organisation and resource rights is a very effective and desirable route to both employment generation and skill development.
- India needs to think of an alternative economic paradigm to prevent the distress we have seen this year.
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