Pop!Tech Bunker Roy

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Duration: 28 minutes and 1 second

Country: United States

Language: English

License: CC Attribution Non-Commercial

Genre: Documentary

Views: 792 (306 embedded)

Posted by: peder on Jun 22, 2007

Profound respect for collective wisdom and traditional skills permeate Bunker Roy’s tale of how his Barefoot College empowers local people to improve their communities by demystifying technology and recognizing the dignity of labor.

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POP!TECH
[♪ POP!TECH Theme Music ♪]
BRINGS TOGETHER
THE WORLD'S LEADING THINKERS
TO SHARE INSPIRATION AND IDEAS
IGNITING CHANGE
AND UNLOCKING
HUMAN POTENTIAL
THIS IS PART
OF THEIR ONGOING
CONVERSATION
POP!TECH
POP!CAST
Presented by Lexus Hybrid Drive
GIVES MORE TO THE DRIVER, TAKES LESS FROM THE WORLD
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
Can I have a show of hands, and find out how many people are involved
with the development field, in the developing countries?
Bunker Roy, POP!TECH 2005
Okay.
Not my fault, but I was sent—I was told I got a very expensive, snobbish,
elitist education in India,
and all our friends at that time, we went to school and college together,
and we didn't know what we were going to do.
Someone ends up as an ambassador, now today, thirty years later.
The Indian ambassador in the U.S. is a good friend.
The permanent representative to the United Nations for India is a good friend.
All of us were in school and college together.
And I was all slated to become a diplomat or a bureaucrat
or a doctor or a teacher or an engineer.
And then one day, I went to a village in India.
It changed my life, because I came back and I told my mother,
you know, I'd like to live and work in a village.
My mother went into a sort of a coma,
[laughter from audience]
because she said, you know, you went to the best and most expensive
school and college in India, and now what you want to do
is to dig wells in the middle of the desert ?
How am I going to explain this to the family?
And at that time my grandfather was the Director General of the United Nations
in FAO, and he was also a bit surprised.
He said, He'll get over it.
Let him go, he'll take it out of his system, and he will come back,
get a good job, make good money.
And she wouldn't speak to me for four or five years; that was a long time,
until two remarkable Americans came to the Barefoot College
slept on the floor, endorsed what I was doing.
Bob McNamara and MIke Bundy, they came and spent the night with us;
and they actually said that this was an approach
which needs to be replicated everywhere.
So for five years I just dug, blasted wells, and that was where I had the vision
of what a Barefoot College should be.
It was the first time I'd ever lived and worked with the poor for five years.
I went into hundred-foot wells, blasted, came out,
and for five years, I was only doing that, and I met these extraordinary people,
and I said, I would like to start a college only for the poor.
Professionals. Who are professionals today?
The Barefoot Professionals of Tilonia
To us, a professional is someone who has
a combination of competence, confidence, and belief.
To me someone—a water diviner is a professional.
I laughed at one of the water diviners, and he said, Come here.
He said, Hold this stick, and I held the stick and I felt very foolish.
He said walk, and I walked, and he said stop, and he put his hand on my shoulder
and the stick went up, and he said, Now bring it down,
and I couldn't bring it down.
And he said, Never laugh at things you don't know.
Never laugh at things you don't know.
The professionals today in India are extraordinary people.
A traditional midwife, for instance, for me is a professional.
Half of the Indian members of Parliament today, God forbid, are still alive
because of the traditional midwives today.
So, I started in a village called Tilonia, which is in the middle of nowhere
in the desert, I've been there for 35 years, 45 degrees centigrade
in the summer, and sometimes it doesn't rain for six years.
The water table when I was there was 50 feet; now it's 350 feet,
and you don't know how lucky you are, ladies and gentlemen with water.
Why Barefoot?
Because millions of people live and walk barefoot.
It's symbolic of the recognition and respect and importance that we give
to the knowledge and traditional knowledge and skills of people today,
which is in the village today, unrecognized, not applied,
and they are there sitting and waiting for the application of this knowledge and skills.
Why knowledge? Why college?
Because it's a place for learning and unlearning.
It's a place where you make mistakes.
You have to make mistakes.
It's a place where the learner is the teacher, and the teacher is the learner.
And it's a college which is only for the poor, so the poor said to me,
Please, don't get anyone with a paper qualification into the college.
We have had enough of people with high-powered paper qualifications.
Let us do it on our own, so anyone who comes to the college does not get
a degree or a diploma.
He lives, trains, picks up a skill, carries on.
It's a college which is unique because it's the one where we feel
that you must demystify technology,
The Barefoot Architects
and you must decentralize right down to the community level.
This is what we felt is the philosophy of the Barefoot College.
So the first thing we did was to set an example by the Barefoot Architects.
This college was built by someone who still can't read and write.
All done by traditional knowledge and skills.
In 2001, the Barefoot Architects of Tilonia got the Aga Khan Award for architecture,
but we had to return it because they said there must be an architect involved.
I said, there was an architect involved just to make the drawings,
but everything else was made by the Barefoot Architects of Tilonia.
When we came to the roofs, all the women said, Now clear out -- all the men, clear out of this campus,
because we have a technology we don't want to share with the men,
[Audience laughter]
which is hundreds of years old.
It was built in 1986; today it is still waterproofed.
We don't know what they put there, a bit of jaggery, a bit of urine,
a bit of everything, but this is hundreds of years old, this technology.
Then the people said, why are you not using the traditional technology
of rainwater harvesting?
In 1986, it was an unheard of technology,
and we said, all right, we'll use the technology that you have for rainwater harvesting.
So we built a tank—400,000-liter tank, under the stage.
You see the stage there, and we built a 400,000-liter tank
and you have a stage in front of you, where about 5,000 people can sit
on top of the rainwater harvesting tank, and see traditional shows.
Something is wrong here.
It's the only village in India which is already in the twenty-first century.
We have optical fiber cable; we have ISDN facilities; we have video conferencing;
and in another week or so, we'll have broadband.
It's the only college which has a career service, so if you buy some of our handicrafts,
Tilona.com, you'll be able to get any handicrafts within seven days,
in the United States, from this little village in Tilonia.
The Barefoot College Campus
And that's the Barefoot College.
Built at $1.50 a square foot.
Traditional knowledge, traditional materials.
And the first problem that we faced was water.
So we adopted the technology of the people and started collecting rainwater
on a very large scale.
THE BAREFOOT ARCHITECTS: RAINWATER HARVESTING
This is what you would find in the state of Rajistan, over a hundred years old,
built by people who are not engineers, not architects, beautiful structures
where the people would sleep on top, and they would go right down
and collect the rainwater from below.
No architect and no engineer was involved in this.
All done by the people themselves.
So we said, why not extend this technology to the schools?
Now you can see how stupid some of our engineers are.
On the left, you allow the rain to go waste, and what we only did
was to connect the roofs into an underground tank, which would sometimes
be 50,000 liters or 100,000 liters, and there you would have water
for at least six months of the year, when children would otherwise
be walking for water for miles during school hours.
So here you have managed to make water—potable water, accessible.
Here's another one.
And when the rainwater tank goes dry, then you fill it up with traditional
water carriers down below with the camels, so it's never unutilized or unused.
I'll just go quickly through this.
where we collect over 33 million liters of water, and only because of water
you'll find children coming to school, because if you're in a brackish water area,
I don't know if you've ever seen brackish water.
If you wash your hair with brackish water, your hair stands up like this.
You can't really bring it down.
So, you have iron problems, fluoride problems, arsenic problems,
all can be solved with rooftop rainwater harvesting.
You just connect the roofs into an underground tank,
GROUND WATER RECHARGE
within $10,000 you can collect 100,000 liters and give accessible, potable water for six months of the year.
The biggest problem in India is the technology which engineers use
of installing hand pumps, which go dry 70% of the time,
and no one thinks of groundwater recharge.
So a very simple—again a people solution here, of how collecting surface water,
filtering it from the top and allowing it to go into open wells.
This is a 100-feet deep open well, where surface rainwater is being collected, and it will collect—
when I thought about this, the people thought I was mad.
They said, this is no way of groundwater recharge,
because this is going to contaminate the ground water, and I said no.
This, for the first time in the history of Tilonia,
we managed to collect it right up to the top.
It was one million liters of rainwater there, and as a result, about 15-16 hand pumps
which were dry for about 10 years, actually got revitalized
and drinking water came, and they found the linkage between groundwater—
artificial groundwater recharge and the handpumps.
So we did this on a large scale, with schools in the back, and the wells here,
and we would connect them underground.
Thirty-three million liters we collected in 500 schools all over the country.
Then I went to Sikkim, and in Sikkim I went to the chief minister,
and I said, would you like to do some rainwater harvesting, because you know
what you engineers love, is let the water go up from the mountain,
right down to the river, and they love these pumps,
and they will pump it all the way back, millions of dollars, they love these schemes.
And I said, why don't you do rainwater harvesting right on the top?
He said, You're Bengali? I said yes.
He said,You're mad, because my chief engineer says there is no way
that we can do this on a large scale.
So I said, Do you mind if I try, Chief Minister?
He said, Yeah, you can try whatever you want, but not with my money.
[Audience laughter]
And this the problem in Sikkim—in the mountain state of Sikkim.
So we dug a pit, 160,000-liter pit; we lined it with ferro-cement;
built my technology center on it, solar energized it,
and then I went back to the chief minister and said, Now, would you like to open it?
He said, Oh, you've done it already?
I said, Yes.
He said, Can I bring my chief engineer along? I said, Yeah, bring him along.
[Audience laughter]
And there he was, the chief minister with the chief engineer, and he said,
Now, Mr. Chief Engineer, you said this was not possible.
This man has done it with Sikkim youth, Sikkim materials, Sikkim technology,
and he hasn't used your expertise at all, which is a good thing.
[Audience laughter]
What's wrong with it?
He said, I've never seen anything like this in my life, sir,
because we weren't taught this thing, we weren't taught rainwater harvesting as an engineer.
So he went back and changed the policy of the government of Sikkim,
and he gave me ten rooftop rainwater harvestings in ten schools in Sikkim,
changed the whole policy, and now we have about 50 schools where we are
doing rainwater harvesting on top of the mountain,
where we are bringing water to children.
As a result of that, attendance has again gone up.
HOUSES FOR THE HOMELESS
These are houses for the homeless that we have made. I'm going through it very fast.
they all look like convicts, they love being photographed.
I'm going through it very fast.
[Audience laughter]
GEODESIC DOMES
Then we came to Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dome.
And someone told us, it's very sophisticated,
something that requires a lot of expertise.
So I went to my village blacksmith and said, would you like to copy it?
And he laughed. He said, Of course, I can copy it.
[Audience laughter]
Nothing in it.
So we're making these—we've got about 150 geodesic domes.
Beautiful designs, look how they do it.
There's a 50,000-liter tank under this meeting taking place.
As you can see, you can have a six-meter dome,
you can have a ten-meter dome, you can have a three-meter dome--
like this. These are three-meter domes.
Internet Cafe
[Audience laughter]
Mail Booth.
And you can also collect rainwater from the geodesic domes.
They collect 270,000 liters up in the mountains in Uttar Pradesh and Uttaranchal
where the whole center is self-sufficient.
THE BAREFOOT PATHOLOGISTS
We have a pathology lab which is in a geodesic dome,
and these are physically challenged people who we just picked up and said,
Now in six months, you're going to become a pathologist.
They had never seen or heard about pathology,
but in six months, they started testing—this is the pathology lab--
in six months they started testing urine, sputum,
in ten rupees they did a test that would cost 300 rupees in Dehli.
THE BAREFOOT COLLEGE SOLAR ENGINEERS
The Barefoot College is the only college which is fully solar-energized.
We have 40 killowatts of panels on the roof;
for the next 25 years, we'll have no problems with power.
Twenty computers, telephone exchange, electronic mail, photocopying machines,
all run off solar, but the beauty is that the installation, fabrication,
repair and maintenance is done by someone who has done six years
of primary school only.
We don't allow anyone with a paper qualification to come into the college.
I'm going fast because I'm running out of time.
This is a solar cooker where we do some community cooking,
all fabricated by rural, illiterate women,
and we get meals for 60 people twice a day with this solar cooker
made by these women, fabricated by these women.
Women also fabricate the solar water heaters in the campus.
And with this technology, we went all over India.
We are solar-electrifying—we have solar-electrified 500 villages from Ladakh, which is in the north,
to Sikkim, all along the 6,000 kilometers of the most inhospitable region of the world,
with 500 Barefoot solar engineers who look after sheep and goats and pashmina goats,
When we asked a woman, what was the benefit you found from solar electricity in Ladakh,
where it was -30 below outside,
she said, It's the first time I can see my husband's face in winter.
[Audience laughter]
How nice.
This is another typical solar house, all in Ladakh.
This is the first woman Barefoot solar engineer--fifth standard pass.
She can fabricate charge controllers, inverters, install solar units anywhere
in India, and she is named Kamla, the first Barefoot woman solar engineer.
We have 37 all over the country.
And I went to Afghanistan, and in Afghanistan, I said, Who can we have?
This is the first woman Barefoot solar engineer in Afghanistan.
We brought her from Afghanistan and brought her into the Barefoot College in Tilonia,
and she went back last month and solar-electrified the first village in Afghanistan
all by herself.
You know, the cost it took us to take ten Barefoot solar engineers
from Kabul, airfare, brought them to Tilonia, six months training,
transported all the units for 150 houses, insured it, installed it,
it was the same cost as having one American consultant in Kabul for one year.
So 500 villages have been solar-electrified.
Barefoot teachers.
THE BAREFOOT TEACHERS
Sixty percent of India's children don't go to school.
They look after goats and cattle in the morning, sheep,
but they only have time to go to school at night.
Sometimes you had kerosene lanterns, but now—and they are very crowded—
so now we have solar lanterns.
You can see the solar lantern on the left.
And that's Kamla who is a Barefoot solar engineer,
who was a teacher at one point in time.
And most of these schools teach them about their own village
more than about the country as a whole,
But the beauty of the night school—that's a solar lantern on top of a rainwater harvesting tank.
That's a 50,000-liter tank they're sitting on.
THE CHILDREN'S PARLIAMENT
But the beauty is, that every two years, we have an election
of 4,000 children in 150 schools, and they elect their own prime minister.
Today the prime minister is 12 years old. She looks after 20 goats in the morning,
but she's prime minister in the evening.
[Audience laughter]
This is the election taking place, and that's the prime minister.
And if the prime minister, God forbid, should write a mere postcard saying
this teacher is not working, he is fired.
She has the power to hire and fire.
This mighty mouse is the Speaker of the House.
[Audience laughter and applause]
That's a cabinet meeting going on.
Very serious, because we have cabinet sessions and everyone--
we have to implement some of the decisions they take.
And that's the cabinet parliament, right on top, it's a geodesic dome where they meet.
That's the cabinet.
GENERATING EMPLOYMENT
One major problem that we are facing is generating employment in rural areas.
Potters. Basketmakers. Handicraft workers.
Dyers. Leather workers. Blacksmiths.
All out of jobs. Why?
Because they are being replaced by plastics being made in urban areas.
Potters are losing their jobs because of plastics.
Leatherworkers are losing their jobs because of plastics,
so there has to be a replacement,
and that is why we have such a major handicraft section, generating employment,
giving them alternative skills in the rural areas.
This man, his name is [sounds like Jokin Chacha], 300 years old.
He knows—he's a psychoanalyst, he's a doctor, he's a teacher,
he solves all our problems, he's a lawyer.
He's made out of trashed World Bank reports.
[Audience laughter and applause]
Those are trashed World Bank reports and MDG goals.
[Audience laughter]
We talk about—this is not entertainment, this is serious stuff.
We tell them why you shouldn't beat your wife, why you should have minimum wages,
why you should have safe drinking water.
You should not pay less than the minimum wage.
And this man once said,
How much are you getting paid?
He spoke to the women.
And the women said, we're only getting 7 rupees,
but the puppet said, You're supposed to get 10 rupees, what are you doing with 7 rupees?
They said, What do we do about it?
He said, Go to the national highway and lie down on the road and stop all the trucks
and then everyone will start getting attention and all the bureaucrats will get worried,
so they started walking towards—next day they started walking towards the road
and started trying to lie on the highway and stop all the trucks.
And the puppet said, What are you doing?
They said, But you said if you lie down on the road, then we might get more money.
And he said, No, that's not the way to do it, why don't you write a letter
to the chief justice of India and the Public Interest Litigation.
And you heard Mr. Mehta yesterday talking about Public Interest Litigation.
So they wrote a very longish petition to the chief justice,
and the chief justice called the governor of Rajasthan and said, What are you doing?
Why are you paying them less wages?
They said, You know, there's act which says that if there's a crisis,
you should pay less wages.
He said, This is a cockeyed act. When there is a crisis, you should pay more money. Why less money?
So there was a constitutional judgment for the history,
where the Supreme Court of India passed a judgment saying that wherever there is a crisis,
wherever there is a famine, you should pay the minimum wage of the state.
And in the history of independent India, no one has ever paid money back to the women,
and when you ask the women, What happened? Where did you get all this information from?
They said, From this puppet, [sounds like Jokin Chacha].
[Audience laughter]
That's all--a puppet--very powerful.
Whenever there's a high percentage of illiteracy, the traditional media is very strong,
so in Rajasthan, traditional media is very strong.
TRANSPARENCY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Transparency and accountability. We asked—we started asking questions,
Do you know where your money is coming from?
And they said, No.
Do you know how the money is being spent?
No.
So then we started a campaign nine years ago about the right to information,
where you had a public hearing—a public hearing where people asked questions
about how the money was being spent.
And corruption cases came out of the woodwork, how much corruption was taking place.
A certain percent of the money was being wasted, was being embezzled,
but for the first time, when you had a public hearing like this,
the public officials were humiliated, were shamed,
and in the history of India, never has a politician returned money,
and this time, in front of everybody, three politicians said, I'm sorry,
I actually embezzled the money, and here's the money back.
[Audience laughter and applause]
I shall end, because my time is up,
with a quotation of Gandhi.
then they laugh at you,
then they fight you, and then you win."
Thank you.
[Audience applause]
Presented by Lexus Hybrid Drive
GIVES MORE TO THE DRIVER TAKES LESS FROM THE WORLD
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Pop!Tech Bunker Roy

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