Solar Electrification through renewable energy is the flagship project of Mlinda. This initiative involves providing access to electricity to rural and tribal communities of West Bengal and Jharkhand in ecologically fragile areas and conflict zones through a system of renewable energy based pico and mini grids that are paid for by the communities. Till date, Mlinda has commissioned 310 pico and micro grids (ranging from 150 Wp to 8 kWP) with an installed base of 105 kWp. To address growing energy access aspirations of the rural and tribal communities, our model evolved to meet holistic energy demand. Till date, Mlinda has commissioned 8 Solar PV based mini-grids in the Gumla district of Jharkhand, each of capacity 22 - 40 kWp, with an installed base of 210 kWp.

We, at Mlinda, believe that clean energy access is not an end in itself; it acts as a catalyzer for stimulating integrated rural development. Hence, we have been very active in using the soalr electrification platform to incubate micro entrepreneurship models at grass-roots, with a particular focus on empowering tribal women. One such endeavor has been micro-enterprise of rice hulling by tribal women’s group. Apart from improving their livelihoods, this doubles up as a good productive anchor load for the mini grid.

Pasanga is a typical tribal village, located in Phori Panchayat area, Gumla District Jharkhand. It houses 144 tribal households with an average hand holding of 2 acres per household. The total paddy yield in the village is around 576 tons per year, out of which around 192 tons is kept aside by the for their own consumption.

They are forced to sell the balance paddy is sold to middle men at a throwaway price of Rs.6 per kg; a classic case of ‘distress selling’. The poor farmers do not have market access to negotiate a better price from middle men. This is where the rice hulling women’s group, consisting of 5 women have plunged into action! They buy paddy, at least 60% of what is sold off to middlemen, from the local farmers at the existing market price. They then themselves hull the paddy locally in electric rice huller machine powered by the mini-grid and sell the rice in the market. This freshly hulled rice fetches them a market price which is twice the price of paddy. The sale of rice husk also acts as an additional revenue stream for the women, along with hulled rice. This Pasanga rice hulling group started functioning from September 16. The average monthly income for each member within the group now stands at Rs. 8000 to Rs. 10,000.

                                              How the Model Works!

Work has commenced in the first five mini grid tribal villages of Narotoli, Pasanga, Arangtoli, Kulabira and Chota Atariya on this model. Enthused by the initial success and community response, we plan to replicate the same another 5 mini grid tribal villages of Gumla. These women groups will act as champions to scale the model in other village economies in tribal and rural geographies of Jharkhand/ Central India.

The cost of one electric rice hulling machine is Rs. 40,000.The total comes to 2 lakhs for 5 machines, one for each women hulling group. We plan to raise a grant of Rs. 2 lakhs through this campaign for making a positive difference in the lives of tribal women.For each donation made, Mlinda will pitch in with a matching grant from its own corpus.