By Parth Patel
It was all set in motion from my perspective. A full-scale prototype had brought up key challenges and solutions that would turn out to be useful at the field site, Turtuk. The field research was planned across 14 days, including the travel back and forth to Ladakh. There are no direct access routes to Turtuk outside of a single motorable road through Khardungla. The area is situated in army territory and is quite sensitive due to border tensions between India and Pakistan.
Along with the transport challenges, I also had to keep in mind the availability of very limited resources that had to be transported along with the turbine manual. Turtuk is located 200 miles from the main city of Leh. Flight routes are available until Leh, and from there it’s a car drive all the way to the village. All the materials outside of labor, including batteries, inverters, adhesive, and bicycle parts had to be arranged from the main city.
On the day of my departure to Turtuk, I had the chance to visit Mr. Ghulam Mehndi in person at his office in Leh. We discussed at length my interest in this collaboration and how he could imagine ways this might help the children of the village learn more about renewable sources of energy. One of the key learnings from my efforts here was to not give them a direct solution but a way of thinking about a problem. We had a conversation about how we could involve youth in the building process. One of the shortcomings that I will discuss later is the underestimation of the importance of time required to build rapport with the community. A lot in the end was about how well I could have communicated the process to them. I was accompanied in many ways throughout my trip by Sagar, a resident involved in the transportation business. A lot of the arrangements were made on the go as and when required. I understood that the people of Turtuk don’t go by schedules, and if I had to work alongside them, I couldn’t go by one either. At Turtuk, I was staying with the village head, Kareem Bahadur, who alongside Sagar arranged all the necessary requirements for making the turbine. Kareem explained to me the history of the village, their culture, language, and daily proceedings. As explained earlier, Turtuk had a shortage of electricity as the diesel generation was meant to be balanced between the other two halves of the village—one Farool and the other Yul. I was working with the Farool village. He also took me around and showed me the possible locations for the turbine.
One of my key learnings looking back at the research was that I failed to communicate the experimental nature of the project. The villagers had started to establish facts about its use once the turbine had been deployed. I will talk about this more in the coming discussion. I had another impactful learning that my thesis hypothesis was nearly wrong in this sense: the villagers didn’t necessarily see the limitations of electricity as a problem. Unlike me, they’ve adapted. Life has shaped itself around the cold, the power cuts, and the rhythm of the seasons. That doesn’t mean they don’t welcome improvement, it just means their relationship with challenge is different. As Kareem Bahadur, the head of the Farool neighborhood,
told me when I asked if they had ever considered leaving: “We’ve grown up here all our lives, and we wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is our home, our people, our landscape, our winter.”
A lot of my assumptions were challenged and changed for the good during my time at Turtuk. Coming back to the making of the turbine, I was introduced to a very kind and skilled gentleman, Inayat. He runs a local garage in the main market of Turtuk. I was assured that I could explain everything to Inayat and he would get it done. I owe a big part of my learning about the community to working with Inayat. Not only did he help me in making the turbine, but he also shared a lot about his intent to always work with wind energy as a solution. A few insights from the conversation I had with Inayat go like this: I remember saying to Inayat, “I think I’ve made a lot of mistakes while building this. There are so many unnecessary or misused components in the design.” His response was something I didn’t expect, but it gave deeper meaning to my thesis.
Inayat said, “I got the design. I’m going to make a better one. You’ve added a lot of unnecessary details. I’ll build a more efficient version. I won’t bother with attaching a motor on the side; I’ll use a car alternator instead.” The turbine initially didn’t help in involving people, but as I spent more time making it and when it got done, a handful of people were willing to help take the turbine for deployment up somewhere in the mountain. It was here that I had my next part of learning. While climbing up with the turbine, the conversation included some key questions from the community side. I am listing a few of them here:
1. Can we use a green sheet, materials used to reflect the sun?
2. Will it still give the energy to light a bulb? How much wind is required for this?
3. Can this turbine work with water? Can we scale it down?
It was important to see the reflection of the community as it explained the necessity of show and tell when it comes to collaboration in such areas. Once the turbine was placed on a mosque terrace up the mountain, I kept thinking I could have never imagined a use case scenario like this on my own. The serenity of the landscape in the background, the steady gusts of wind, it was a joy to witness how far the turbine had come.
Once the task was implemented, I wanted to learn more about their thought process behind this. As I explained my intention behind the project, I came to realize that they didn’t see electricity as a major issue like I did. What intrigued them more was the object we had built together. I encouraged them to improve on what we had done, because as an outsider, I don’t have the contextual knowledge needed to create meaningful change on my own. They recorded our conversation and the installation process to show it at the local school. I don’t know if they’ll actually end up using it, especially after the turbine didn’t live up to expectations. But I insisted on one thing: these errors are part of the process. Even if just one kid in that school keeps asking questions about how to make it work more efficiently, then it’s worth it. A lot went wrong in the sense that I later received a text from the community saying the turbine stopped working due to a mechanical glitch. It was a realization on my end to understand that the time required to implement a particular solution and make it operational are two different things. Yet, my research had a lot of takeaways that I summarize in the following line: “A shift from me asking questions to them asking questions”
