Management of community-based energy interventions in rural areas of India: issues and perspectives

Development priorities of communities are seldom considered and local stakeholders are often not engaged in planning and implementation programmes for improving quality of life. Energy interventions, particularly, face an up-hill task in this regard because of the sheer absence of effort to link energy concerns with other developmental priorities of communities. Organizing the community around a particular issue is a highly complicated task, largely because of issues such as ‘ownership’ of asset(s) and equity in cost and benefit sharing. The paper brings forth the critical factors that may determine the success or failure of community-level energy interventions through a social analysis of three village-level experiences of installing solar photovoltaic pumps for domestic use in northern India. The lessons derived hold particular relevance within the current policy framework, in which technology alone is not sustainable unless appropriate investments in building human and institutional capacity are made. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.