Biodata of Anil K. Rajvanshi

Dr. Anil K Rajvanshi has been the director of the Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) at Phaltan, Maharashtra since 1981. NARI is a private non-profit NGO working in rural India. It is a registered trust and does pioneering work in the areas of agriculture, renewable energy, animal husbandry and environmentally sound sustainable development. Dr. Rajvanshi is also the trustee and honorary secretary of NARI. He has concentrated his efforts for last 25 years on how to use modern science and technology to achieve environmentally sound rural development. Dr. Rajvanshi's research has therefore spanned a whole spectrum of areas affecting the lives of rural population. These have included among others cooking and lighting, small power generation, water purification and effluent treatment through the use of renewable energy in environmentally sound way.

Dr. Rajvanshi was born and raised in Lucknow, India. After obtaining B.Tech. and M.Tech. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from I.I.T. Kanpur in early 1970’s, Dr. Rajvanshi went to USA to pursue a Ph.D. degree in the University of Florida at Gainesville, U.S.A. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering in 1979 with specialization in solar energy and then taught at the University of Florida for two and half years before returning to India in 1981 to join NARI. He left a very lucrative career in U.S. to come and work for rural development in India. Dr. Rajvanshi established the energy and sustainable development work at NARI from scratch to make it nationally and internationally renowned. He has directed its activities in these areas since 1981.

With the help of his colleagues, Dr. Rajvanshi has carried out research in varied subject areas, which were selected based on perceived needs of local rural population in and around Phaltan. He believes in using the best tools of science and technology to solve the problems of rural India. For example, during his early stay at Phaltan, electricity situation was not very good resulting in frequent blackouts. This made him start work on developing a very efficient and improved liquid fuel lantern. The designing of the lantern required very sophisticated tools of heat and mass transfer, combustion mechanics and fluid dynamics. This lantern christened “NOORIE" is a multifuel one and runs on kerosene, diesel and low concentration ethanol. According to knowledgeable experts in the area of lighting, development of NOORIE lantern is the first major advancement since early 1920s in lantern technology. It is much more efficient than the existing designs available and is much easier to light. Besides, it also doubles as a cooking stove. There is a good demand for Noorie lanterns both internally and for exports. Recently these lanterns have been exported to the U.S. and the Indian army is testing it for their use.

In developing NOORIE lantern, Dr. Rajvanshi become acutely aware of the need for developing an alternative liquid fuel for kerosene which should be renewable and home grown. Consequently he and his team established the pioneering program of production of ethanol from sweet sorghum in middle 1980's. Sweet sorghum is an excellent substitute to sugarcane for ethanol production. It produces grain, sweet juice and excellent fodder simultaneously from the same piece of land. Dr. Rajvanshi and his group established probably one of the largest multidisciplinary research program in the world on sweet sorghum for ethanol production. It included extensive breeding for higher yielding varieties, fermentation studies, solar distillation plant (a 50 l/day distillation plant running completely on solar energy was set up at NARI campus in 1987), and development of stoves and lanterns to work on low concentration ethanol. These efforts resulted in making NARI the only Institute in India to be invited by European Economic Commission to be a part of European network in Sweet Sorghum Research and Development in 1993. Consequently NARI’s sweet sorghum hybrids were tested in Zimbabwe, Thailand, France and Italy. Recently a very major industrial group in India has taken NARI's ethanol technology and hence large scale growing of sweet sorghum for ethanol production will be taken up in India. Besides the production of ethanol, Dr. Rajvanshi and his team also embarked upon the development of complete technology of producing jaggery and syrup from sweet sorghum. The MADHURA sweet sorghum syrup is available in the market. Till today about 4 tons of it has been sold. It is a natural plant product and has been found an excellent source of calcium.

Recently the Government of India's national program on ethanol has given a boost to the sweet sorghum project. Consequently large scale plantation of MADHURA sweet sorghum for ethanol production has taken place all over the country.

The whole idea behind sweet sorghum development was to give farmers value addition so that they could earn extra remuneration. Besides sweet sorghum can provide clean and environmentally sound ethanol fuel to the rural areas. Dr. Rajvanshi's work on lighting and cooking technologies has led to possibility of setting up a national technology mission on this subject. Recently the Planning Commission recommended setting up of this mission.

The work on sweet sorghum ethanol production also led to the development of technology for cleaning the distillery waste. In rural areas of Maharashtra there is a widespread network of sugar factories. These factories produce molasses as a byproduct, which is used for producing ethanol in distilleries. The effluent produced in this process is dark-colored and has an obnoxious smell. It also has a very high chemical oxygen demand (COD). Most of the times this effluent is discharged without any treatment and pollutes surrounding water bodies. This affects the health of the people living in these areas. Even if this effluent is treated for producing methane, it is only partially purified. Dr. Rajvanshi has developed a patented method to clean this effluent completely with the help of a catalyst and solar energy. Thus the detoxification of distillery waste takes place via a photocatalyst. This method has been successfully tested on laboratory scale and now a pilot plant to treat 100-l/day effluent has been set up at the NARI campus and is undergoing full scale testing. If successful this will pioneer the detoxification of distillery effluent in rural areas and will help the environment.

Dr. Rajvanshi has directed his attention to providing electricity to rural areas. Consequently he has developed strategies for electrification at taluka level and village level. He is the principal author of national policy on Energy Self-Sufficient Talukas. This policy was implemented by the Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources, who have started surveying Talukas in different parts of India. As a part of this policy Government of India, through Indian Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA), has provided soft loans to 35 biomass based power stations (each of 6 MW capacity) in the country. This is a prime example of Dr. Rajvanshi’s efforts in creating a national program for producing environmentally sound power from renewable energy biomass source.

Another example of need-based research was the development of loose biomass gasifier. In Phaltan taluka there are two sugar factories with a lot of farmers growing sugarcane. After cutting the sugarcane, farmers burn the dried leaves on ground. This is not only a loss of a valuable natural resource, but also leads to tremendous air pollution and production of green house gases. Dr. Rajvanshi and his team have therefore devised and setup at NARI campus a 500 KW_th loose sugarcane leaves gasifier for which they have received a patent. The gasifier which is totally automatic and is a PLC - based system can be very useful for providing heat and power for rural businesses.

As mentioned earlier, Dr. Rajvanshi who is originally from Lucknow, has concentrated his efforts for last few years on improving the cycle rickshaw so that the hardships being borne by the rickshaw pullers are reduced. The existing rickshaw has been totally reengineered for comfort of passengers and rickshaw puller. He and his team have therefore developed three types of rickshaws. In the improved cycle rickshaw (IMPRA), the length of chain has been reduced; there is back-wheel braking and three-speed gears and it is lightweight. All these improvements enable the rickshaw puller to take two passengers on a 6-10% slope quite effortlessly without alighting from his seat. In addition, by attaching a small battery- driven motor to IMPRA, a motor-assisted pedal rickshaw (MAPRA) has been developed. This enables the rickshaw puller to take two passengers on a 10% slope at a speed of 10-15 km/hr without getting down from his seat. Five MAPRAs were test-operated for one year on Pune University Campus. This experiment has elicited tremendous response from other campuses in the country. Efforts are also underway to put them at the World Heritage sites in the country. Recently these IMPRAs and MAPRAs have been exported to Europe and US.

Finally, he and his team have developed ELECSHA-an electric rickshaw, which runs at 30-35 km/hr and can travel 60 km with two passengers in one battery charge. Not only will these improved rickshaws prove to be a good alternative to the cycle rickshaws in use presently, but also to the 3 and 6-seater autorickshaws which cause tremendous noise and air pollution in cities like Pune.

Dr. Rajvanshi is also trying to set up rickshaw pullers cooperative societies in different cities so that the rickshaw pullers can get loans from the banks to buy the rickshaws. He believes that electric cycle rickshaws can provide a very environmentally sound rural and urban transport system for India. This work on rickshaws has been extensively covered in both print and mass media including BBC, Star News, Doordarshan etc. Interest has been generated nationally and internationally by our work on these projects. The work on motor-assisted rickshaw has also led to the pioneering development of a motor-assisted hand operated wheel chair for physically handicapped. The vehicle christened MANHARA (motor assisted NARI handicapped rickshaw) is really a great boon to increase the mobility of disabled people. Efforts are on to commercialize these vehicles.

In addition to these projects, Dr. Rajvanshi has also concentrated his attention on how farmers can derive maximum benefit from crops such as safflower. He has developed the whole plant approach such that all parts of plants are useful to humans and that the farmers can earn extra income. Thus the safflower crop, besides producing seed for oil, will also be used to harvest its petals. He has been instrumental in popularizing safflower petal as herbal tea and has developed a solar powered battery-operated machine to collect petal from spiny safflower plants. The batteries are charged by solar energy. These petals increase the remuneration to farmers manifold. He is also starting a program on sustainability at NARI whereby from the same piece of land food, fuel, feed and fertilizer production can be optimized.

One of the efforts mounted by Dr. Rajvanshi has been in the area of use of Internet for rural applications such as e-commerce and technology transfer. Thus, about a ton of safflower seed, 250 kg of sweet sorghum seed and NARI's improved rickshaws and lanterns have been sold world wide through the Internet. Large number of inquiries for NARI technologies are received from all over the world. This small experiment has shown that rural technologies and commodities have a tremendous market world over and can be sold via internet through a rural based organization.

The Central Government and Government of Maharashtra have appointed Dr. Rajvanshi on many prestigious committees. Therefore he is or has served on central Government committees like Core group on Rural technology in the Office of the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India, Advisory Board of Energy, Planning Commission and Ministry of Non-conventional Energy Sources among others. At state level he has been nominated as member State Planning Commission (Energy and Environment Advisory Committee) and advisory board of Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission. He has been advisor and consultant to International Foundation of Science (Sweden), Winrock International (USA), E & Co (USA) etc.

In 2001, Dr. Rajvanshi received the prestigious Jamnalal Bajaj Award for the use of science and technology in rural development from Dr. Manmohan Singh. This is one of the most well known awards in India for rural development. In 1998 Dr. Rajvanshi was inducted in the prestigious U.S. based Solar Hall of Fame. He is the second Indian to be so inducted. He and his team's efforts have resulted in NARI getting the prestigious Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) Annual Award (2001-2002) for rural development at the hands of Prime Minister Shri Atal Behari Vajpayee. In 2004 his work on MAPRAs was given the prestigious Energy Globe award (in the AIR category).

Dr. Rajvanshi has lectured at many universities in U.S.A and India. In July 2002 he was honored by the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Florida, Gainesville by inviting him to give the inaugural lecture of the Charles V and Bertha C Perill Lecture Series on Sustainable Development. In September 2003 he was invited by the Principal Scientific Advisor to GOI, Dr. R. Chidambaram to address BARC scientists on rural development. Recently in 2004 he was invited to give a distinguished lecture in the College of Engineering at University of Florida on his work at NARI. He was also invited to give a lecture at MIT, Boston and to address the prestigious IDEAS competition. In 2006 he was invited to give an Institute lecture at IIT Bombay and in March 2007 he delivered a public lecture at the prestigious Patel Center of Sustainable Solutions in USF, Tampa.

He has 132 publications, some of them in prestigious national and international journals, seven patents and three chapters in books. He has chaired many sessions at national and international conferences. His work has been carried extensively both in print and electronic media.

Besides his engineering work he is also involved in studies of human consciousness and has recently published a book entitled “Nature of Human Thought” in which he has made an attempt to synthesize the ancient Indian Yogic thought with modern cosmology and brain research. He also believes that sustainability and spirituality go hand in hand and writes extensively on these issues. His spiritual writings appear as editorial articles in Times of India. Recently he has penned his memoirs about his US student days.

June 2007

E-mail: mailto:anilrajvanshi@gmail