Biogas and the Rural Poor

8/3/2019 Biogas and the Rural Poor

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Michel CAMES

MA in Development Studies

Tropical Environmental Management

University of Leeds

Essay - Semester 2

1995/96

Biogas and the rural poor: Contradictions and Suggestions

In this essay, I shall aim to discuss a biogas diffusion programme and which

essential capabilities have to be stimulated if it is to meet the needs of its

potential users. Using India as a case study, I attempt to show that for

making the biogas technology more relevant as an instrument of ruraldevelopment, it must be centred on the needs of the majority of the rural

population, viz. those who own less than the minimum of the required cattle

to operate a biogas plant. Consequently, collective action leading to the

adoption of communally-managed biogas systems is required if biogas is not

meant to be merely of benefit to a minority and a status symbol of the

better-off.

In order to make this point I will first shed light on the gradual diffusion of

family biogas plants in India and the obstacles and contradictions involved in

this process. I will question whether the adoption of this approach will not

reach an upper ceiling of diffusion long before biogas could have a tangible

effect on current issues of environmental and social sustainable

development. I will then continue to elucidate and identify the obstacles to a

more people-focused approach implied in the pursuit of a biogas


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programme at community level which could have a genuine impact to the

alleviation of poverty and create more sustainable livelihoods at village level

but which necessitates more firm socio-political interventions. After

highlighting the conditions and constraints for local action to be induced, afinal conclusion on the general prospects for the biogas technology will close

this essay.

The traditional approach

Deforestation with its main consequences of land erosion, land slides and

floods have been the primary urge for governments to promote the diffusion

of the biogas technology.

This technology can indeed reduce the stress on scarce fuelwood by

substituting it by biogas produced in a process of anaerobic digestion which

is mainly fed by cattle dung and which can be burnt much more efficiently

than either fuelwood or the required dung. Biogas in the form of methane

represents a clean energy which allows a more healthy, smokeless cooking.

Collection and storage of fuelwood becomes redundant and women - who in

most cases run the household - have more time for other activities.

But except for the ability to use biomass to generate a fuel, the potential to

use the residual sludge as a fertilizer is maintained. More, as Lichtman

points out, although sun-drying reduces the nutrient content, biogas slurry

still contains more nutrients than either dried dung or composted wastes on

an equivalent weight basis (Lichtman, 1987: 349).

However, as Fulford argues, whereas the running costs of a biogas plant are

low, the capital costs per unit of energy produced are fairly high in a family

plant, a factor common to most alternative energy technologies (Fulford,

1988:4). Thus, a small farmer has to be convinced that it is worth it. As

Fulford continues, if the cash cost of wood fuel is low or zero, the savings


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made by replacing it with biogas appear to be financially unattractive as the

original investment on the purchase of a biogas plant may not be recovered

(Fulford, 1988:5).

This has induced governments to subsidize biogas plants in the premises

that their social economic return is clearly given. According to Bhatia, the

tax concessions and subsidies available in India amount up to 45 % of the

capital costs of family biogas plants (Bhatia, 1990:584). Beyond that, some

Indian state governments further subsidize the costs. As the non-

governmental organization Jana Jagaran from Belgaum, Karnataka points

out, up to 75 % of the costs can thus be recovered by a prospective biogas

plant owner.

However, subsidies can only mitigate the disadvantage of those peasants

who are better off than the majority of their fellow rural dwellers. Owning

the required number of 3 to 5 cattle to provide the necessary input of dung,

- they do not account for more than 15 % of all rural households (Moulik,

1990:109) - very often they still cannot afford to purchase a plant. As Jana

Jagaran argues, the available subsidies are only released on completion of

building of a plant. However, the potential beneficiaries in the need for a

bank loan to bridge the refund of the capital costs often have great difficulty

in getting a bank loan for their poverty and illiteracy.

Very often they do not have the record of right concerning their land

and house in their own names. (...) For making a loan they have to

make a number of trips to the bank which is often at a distance from

their village. In the process they suffer the loss of a number of

working days and also the loss of money needed for travel up and

down. The beneficiary will not approach the bank by himself and the

bank will not reach out to the beneficiary on its own initiative (Jana

Jagaran, 1994).


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Besides that recent efforts have been made to ease the accessibility of credit

to the poor - e.g. the initiative of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh (see

Holcombe, 1995) - there are other major disadvantages to be considered.

While large landowners are primarily interested in biogas for the use ofcooking and lighting, the primary concern of other villagers lies in the

removal of problems associated with poverty. Meeting subsistence needs for

cooking and lighting is not their most urgent need; a new technology should

contribute directly to improving productivity or income in the rural sector,

whether agricultural or in small-scale agricultural processing industries like

mini-rice mills, oil extraction or other mechanical operations like flour-

milling, threshing and water pumping activities.

As Vidyarthi argues, such schemes which would generate far more interest

in the technology among villagers as compared to its uses as a cooking fuel

have not been adequately exploited (Vidyarthi, 1985:1959). It is this

approach of meeting the user needs which is paramount to any successful

diffusion of a technology.

However, as biogas fuel engines which can earn an income for the owner

require a larger plant which uses feed from more than 20 cattle (Fulford,

1988:6), they can only be considered by wealthy farmers. Or by

cooperatives.

It is questionable whether focusing on the conventional approach by

subsidizing privately-owned biogas plants represents a wise use of funds

which could have alternatively devoted to devise diffusion programmes also

incorporating the remaining majority of peasants with either no cattle or

below the required amount to operate a plant.

As Griffin argues, by meeting the energy needs of 10 to 15 % of the rural

population would nonetheless be a substantial accomplishment and

successful private gas plants could potentially provide an efficient

demonstration incentive to small farmers to cooperate in methane


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generation. However, as the author continues, some concern has been

expressed that, as with the introduction of high-yielding rice grain varieties

during the Green Revolution, only individual rather than cooperative action

will be encouraged by the success of private biogas plants (Cecelski et al.,1979:78 quoting Griffin, in Barnett, 1978:70).

The conventional approach of furthering biogas technology only for those

who are able to benefit from it raises some more questions. As Prasad et al.

argued more than 20 years ago:

What happens to those villagers who do not own cattle? (...) Today,

their energy needs are met by collecting dung (...). If the burning of

dung (...) is banned as a wasteful practice and the villagers are in no

position to buy biogas, then they will end up with no fuel at all - in

other words, their position will be worsened by the introduction of

biogas plants. (...) [Also,] as biogas plants become more popular, one

can expect an increasing tendency to have stable-bound cattle to

augment the collection of dung and urine. Such a tendency may lead

to a resistance on the part of cattle owners to surrender biogas to

those who do not own cattle (Prasad et al., 1974:1360).

As Vidyarthi puts it, the knowledge about energy related technology greatly

exceeds knowledge about the problems such technology is meant to solve

(Vidyarthi, 1985:1953) and it seems that it is on the latter knowledge we

have to focus if we have in mind to enhance the social and ecological

sustainability of the poor.

Collective action

Community biogas has received some attention in India. Voluntary

organizations have indicated that there were about 25 village systems in

operation throughout India in 1987 while 100 such systems were to be


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constructed as part of the National Project on Biogas Development

(Lichtman, 1987:351). According to a Planning Commission on energy policy

however, India has a potential of at least 560,000 community biogas plants

(Agarwal, 1979:9).

Despite of tax concessions and subsidies of 100 % of the capital costs

including the cost of controlled operations for up to one year (Bhatia,

1990:584) - programmes which tend to be fashionable and often attract

funding, as Fulford asserts (Fulford, 1988:98) - the past success of jointly

owned plants has been limited. According to Fulford,

Poor communication often led to false expectations by villagers and a

rejection of the project when these expectations were not fulfilled. (...)

The relationships between the implementing organization and the

village community deteriorated with time. During the planning stage,

the villagers were keen to cooperate and made many promises.

However, they tended to see the biogas plant as the responsibility of

the aid groups who were paying for it. (...) These attitudes were the

result of a wrong approach: the villagers saw the community plants as

projects set up by the implementing organizations. Therefore the

people felt no commitment to the projects and were not interested in

their success. Their only concern was to get as much out of the project

for themselves as they could (Fulford, 1988: 96-98).

The concept of paying for fuel being traditionally alien to villagers, a

community plant primarily designed to substitute for free fuelwood and left

to the village after a certain period of maintenance by the implementing

agency without any prior involvement of the locals only can fail. According to

Fulford,

A project must belong to the people for whom it was intended. This

means that the villagers need to have a financial commitment to the


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project, as well as supplying local materials (such as sand) and labour.

(...) In general, homogeneous communities, composed of people from

the same tribe, racial group or caste, are more likely to work together

than heterogeneous communities. (...) The cooperative spirit of themembers of a community can be tested by giving them a simple job

that they must do together. (...) If they do this the project can move

into the next stage.

The people need to have their own decision-making mechanisms, so a

management committee should be organized. (...) While the

implementors can offer advice and may have to train people in

committee procedures, all the decisions about the project should be

made by this committee, with the agreement of the rest of the

community (Fulford, 1988:98-100).

However, this is rarely practized. Village management systems, which have

traditionally been in existence in India for the management of common

property resources such as forests and fisheries - and which have been

managing these resources sustainably over centuries on a kinship basis -

have in many cases been breaking down due to state appropriation of these

resources. As Redclift et al. put it, excluded from management of their local

environment local people cease to act like stewards and become poachers

(Redclift et al., 1994:11).

Where such systems are still in operation, they should be supported and

might be suited for the management of a community energy plant.

However, as Fulford argues,

The villagers must understand all the implications of the project.

Members of the committee can be taken to visit other community

biogas projects; pictures and models can be used for training courses


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for them. This process must take several months or even years, but it

should not be rushed, otherwise the villagers may not be able to cope

with the project (Fulford, 1988:100).

Where the coordination at village level is socially not achievable and it would

be futile to look for a uniform response across villagers in matters relating to

participation, it can be more practical, according to Vidyarthi, to organize

collection of dung and distribution of plant benefits on a smaller scale, i.e.,

at the level of a cluster of families closely related or those belonging to a

group having similar needs and willing to cooperate in such a venture. As he

continues:

This would ensure greater cohesion and cooperation between the

participating families, factors essential for success of a community

scheme. The exact numerical strength of a cluster could vary with

circumstances. Simple observation suggests that the lower the

strength, greater would be the participation potential (Vidyarthi,

1985:1959).

However a biogas system which is able to contribute directly to improving

productivity or income has to be of a certain minimum size, otherwise it can

only be used to provide the subsistence needs of cooking and lighting.

Lichtman argues that it is easy to blame an inhospitable set of village

conditions and attitudes as the causes of many of the problems facing

biogas systems. According to him, there is simply no way to address the

problems of village commitment, insufficient understanding of villagers

perceptions of their needs and a lack of social administration by merely

providing some training and facilities (Lichtman, 1987:356). As Ruttan

argues, there is a conflict between wanting to achieve tangible increases in

rural output quickly and realizing that the human resources and organization

vital to achieve this increased output can only be developed over time. This


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paradox would account for the oscillations in the approaches towards rural

development:

Planners become inpatient with the lack of tangible increases in outputthat are often associated with efforts to organize rural areas.

Alternately, planners are equally frustrated when attempts to boost

output either fail or have undesirable social consequences due to a

lack of rural organization. (...) Sectoral programs like biogas diffusion

probably represents one extreme of this cycle (Lichtman, 1987:357

quoting Ruttan, 1984).

The production-oriented view of most community biogas programmes also

allows, according to Lichtman, to circumvent the need to confront directly

the problem of concentrated political and economic power (Lichtman,

1987:357). As Roy starkly objects,

It is a fallacy to think that the development of infrastructure leads to

the development of people. That opportunities, facilities and funds

percolate to the last man, is myth. It does not happen, whatever our

rural experts might claim. It stops at the level of the rural rich and

what trickles down to the poor reaches in the form of patronage

(Lichtman, 1987:357, quoting Roy, 1983:14).

According to Lichtman, unless a balance is struck by also investing in

people - creating local organizations that truly understand local needs and

conditions - investments only in production are often wasted (Lichtman,

1987:357).

Peemans argues that biogas research has focused too much attention simply

on biogas. It has shown that biodigesters can contribute considerably to

production increases. Biofertilizers could be utilized to improve grass yields

(twice the national average on the same type of soil) and the result was

improved by the use of irrigation, based on biogas powered pumpsets


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(Peemans, 1987:32, 34). According to Dayal, it was demonstrated that in

this case the wastes produced from a cow herd can be sufficient to reach

self-sufficiency in green fodder with only a small pasture, a point of

importance for peasant communities with little available land (Peemans,1987:34 quoting Dayal, 1984).

Diversification of inputs can also be achieved. As has been empirically and

scientifically proven to be a good source of biogas, water hyacinth and

African payal, which are a major aquatic pest, are available plenty in areas

with high precipitation. Being a menace for agriculture, fisheries and

navigation, they can be collected even with positive externalities from ponds

and rivers. In addition, the sludge obtained from the fermented water

hyacinth is very rich in nutrients. These vegetable resources could be grown

as well in village biomass plantations. They could break any possible limits

upon input availability imposed by the prevailing use of cow dung (Prasad et

al., 1974:1347, Yusuf, 1990:196, Peemans, 1987:30).

According to Peemans, the multiplier effect of intensive interlinkages inside a

local food and energy structure cannot be dissociated from the problem of

social and institutional organizations. Cooperative organization, as he

argues, is the best way to ensure an equal participation in the enlargement

of use values created by collective labour and to supply long term security in

this respect.

A cooperative organization is also very important to ensure a gradual

learning by doing process through which the members will decide the

pace and profile of the construction of the integrated food-energy

system. (...) This may entail slower, short-term development and an

uneven rhythm of development among communities. But that can

ensure, with time, a link between education, training, and control of

local production conditions (Peemans, 1987:42-43).


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Such local, facilitating organizations must be encouraged if a biogas

programme is to be developed on a wider scale. They are usually

nongovernmental and state authorities may not even be aware of their

existence. More, as Lichtman objects, the committed individuals whocomprise these groups often find that their independence from government

is an essential asset that ensures the local organisations credibility among

villagers (Lichtman, 1987:359).

To induce participatory collective action, some degree of equality in the

distribution of assets must be existent. It can be assumed that in a situation

of reasonable homogeneous distribution of asset ownership, a fairly

democratic management system can be achieved once it can show to be in

the interests of rational individuals. However, as Wade points out, beyond a

certain point of asset inequality, where one or two families are

overwhelmingly dominant, there may be no popular involvement to achieve

(Wade, 1988:190).

According to Johnston and Clark, collective action is found only where the

net collective benefit is relatively high as villagers will deliberately concert

their actions only to achieve intensely felt needs which could not be met by

individual responses (Wade, 1988:211, quoting Johnston and Clark, 1982).

However, even where such action is potentially possible, often it still has to

be encouraged and motivated. As Lichtman argues, the nature of demand

must be clearly articulated, something that is extremely difficult to

comprehend in rural areas where economies are frequently non-monetary;

where residents are illiterate, mal-nourished, and oppressed; and where

resources are poorly developed or nonexistent. He continues:

Local organizations rarely have the resources either to conduct

research and development themselves or to obtain information on

recent innovations in rural technologies. Local groups will also need to


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develop (or more likely, borrow) staff capabilities in methods for

surveying rural energy needs and resources, and in selecting and

implementing particular technological options (Lichtman, 1987:359,

361).

By putting more stress on the issues of fostering the development of grass

roots organizations with salient qualities and encouraging an increasing

degree of autonomy and self reliance of the grass roots organizations, plus

some form of decision-making input into project activities leading to a

measure of control over the management of the project (Wade, 1988:210,

quoting World Bank, 1984), then community management of this promising

technology - which up to now has only been supported half-heartedly and

has therefore not shown any tangible results - might not only lead to

increased resource productivity on a long-term basis, but could also

generate more adequate and decent livelihoods, especially for women.

Implications and Conclusion

For evaluating the prospects for the biogas technology with reference to

India, certain implications must be made.

First, as discussed above, the government authorities simply have to

exercise the political will to channel capital into projects that enhance local

capabilities to organize rural areas. They have to become less preoccupied

with the mere diffusion of technologies, especially, as Lichtman emphasizes:

Biogas technology is in an intermediate stage of development and the

best valuable data are not based on the best technology that could be

available with only a moderate effort. If this raises questions about

whether costly efforts to diffuse this technology are premature, the

questions are valid (Lichtman, 1987:349).


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Also, as Agarwal and Narain argue, however overlooking the multiple

benefits of biogas and possible future rising needs for fuelwood, be it

through population increase or commercial deforestation:

Areas deficient in water and fodder also suffer fuelwood scarcity and

forest degradation. Where adequate water and fodder are available,

fuelwood is usually not a problem. Hence, substitution possibilities

(using technologies such as biogas plants) and, where feasible, the

benefits therefrom are limited (Dutt et al., 1996:298 referring to

Agarwal and Narain, 1989:v).

It is clear that water scarcity can cause an obstacle to the diffusion of the

biogas technology as roughly the required water / dung input ratio of a

standard digester is 1, but, as Lichtman points out, there are a number of

promising design approaches that have yet to be adequately evaluated and

which may offer solutions to some of the problems still plaguing biogas

digesters:

Horizontal plug-flow digesters have exhibited higher gas yields, less

excavation required for construction and far less water needed for

operation. This design offers the potential for significant reduction in

required digester volume per unit of gas produced, and hence lower

cost (Lichtman, 1987:348).

Apart from this issue, biogas can, as discussed, not only be a substitute for

not-so-scarce fuelwood, but also for conventional energy sources. As Desai

argues, the high costs of conventional energy sources in remote areas far away

from their points of production creates a niche which could be exploited by

decentralized sources of alternative energy. However, as he argues, often

prices of conventional energy are politically determined and subsidize rural

populations or farmers (Desai, 1992:964). As Bhatia objects, in certain Indian

states, the electricity tariff in the mid-eighties was only around one-sixth of the


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average cost of its supply. Consequently, rich farmers are reluctant to adopt

biogas-diesel driven dual-fuel engines and use this technology only as a

precautionary back-up system against frequent power failures in water

pumping particularly during the peak irrigation season (Bhatia, 1990:583).

Nevertheless, despite many uncertainties and impediments which affect the

diffusion of the biogas technology, its capabilities to contribute in alleviating

poverty and misery of the rural poor in developing countries are manifold.

In this essay I have emphasized the community approach to be the only

viable response to make this technology have a lasting tangible impact on

the majority of rural people and have questioned whether the conventional

approach focusing on privately-owned plants with a wished-for trickling-

down effect could have more than marginal effect.

However, I want to make clear that any intermediate solutions between

those poles are more desirable than none at all. So, as I have discussed,

joint ventures of a cluster of poor families ensuring great cohesion and

cooperation are of major importance and must be encouraged by suitable

credit mechanisms.

Also, share-rearing of livestock could play a role regarding biogas

technology. As Beck argues, share-rearing, which tends to be overlooked by

researchers, is a common arrangement throughout South Asia, where

a household will raise a female goat, cow, duck or chicken given to

them by another, usually richer, household. After the animal has been

given birth twice, the first born and the mother are returned to the

owner, and the rearer keeps the second born. (Beck, 1989:27).

Such relationships which are mutually assisting and have - hence - survived

since generations, can be of importance in regard of the biogas diffusion in


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supplying poor peasants with an adequate supply of dung for a biogas plant

raising the inputs over the limit of the required minimum.

It may be at times a nonconventional solution which is able to offerresponses to problems related to the livelihoods of the rural poor. Refraining

from submitting an outsiders project and listening to what villagers are

saying should be based on what people feel they need. Only then we can

learn to amalgamate new innovations with conceptions of rural poor and

mould new forms of livelihoods, making the poor less poor.


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Biogas and the Rural Poor

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