Lighting up lives
We all are so caught up in our own technology and apps that we close ourselves to some of the life changing gadgets and innovations which are changing lives in India. One such successful product is “Lanstove”.
60% of rural India continues to have no or very little electricity and this necessity has mothered this invention. Lanstove- as the name suggests is a lamp and also a stove. It is environment friendly and developed by Dr.Anil Rajvanshi. He is one of the few who came back to India despite a successful life in USA – he was a professor at the University of Florida. But he came back and started working with a rural NGO – Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI) in Phaltan, Maharashtra in 1981. And for the past 33 years he has been working with farmers, engaged in various innovations that can solve rural India’s problems related to energy, water, pollution and income generation, broadly based on renewable energy concepts in environmentally sound ways.
Lanstove runs on kerosene, and not only cooks food but also produces a high quality light without polluting the environment. It needs some 15 litres kerosene cylinder per month and can easily cook a meal for a family of five members. The bright light it produces is equivalent to a 200-300 watts bulb. The pressure of the stove is managed manually by a small bicycle pump. It can easily boil five litres of water in 50 minutes, which takes much longer in traditional cook stoves. It has a lifespan of 15 years and is available at a cost of Rs.6000-7000 per stove, err, lamp, when mass produced. But the thorn in the bush here is non-availability of kerosene. The Govt currently gives only 5 lts of subsidized kerosene for below poverty line (BPL) families, which is inadequate for Lanstove applications. Dr.Rajvanshi has taken special permission from block officers to make enough kerosene available to the villagers for one year. Apart from that, he has been writing to various policy makers to make kerosene available to villagers through their UID cards.
Salute to people like Dr.Rajvanshi who work tirelessly and selflessly for the betterment of those less fortunate.