The Barefoot College Films

We have been making films for the Social Work Research Centre (also known as The Barefoot College), Tilonia, Rajasthan, for well over a decade. The college was established in the early 1970s by Bunker Roy, and has been at the forefront of developing technology that is appropriate and affordable in rural India. The word "barefoot" is symbolic reference to the College's philosophy of maximizing the use of human resources in areas that are resource poor in every other sense of the term.

The Barefoot College has worked to first develop, and then disseminate such technology within a rural population most likely to use it. This demystification and decentralization of technology provides the core of SWRC's philosophical moorings.

Our documentation continues to be a part of ongoing country-wide SWRC campaigns to demystify technologies as well as, more recently, the-MKSS led campaign on the right to information.

Jun Sunwais: Right to Information (2002)

Client / Financial Support:Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan, Devdungari, Rajasthan (MKSS)
Duration: 17 minutes

The film documents a series of public hearings in several village panchayats dating back to December 1994. These meetings were organized by the MKSS and were intended to act as social audits of all development related expenditure that had taken place within and around these villages. A key fallout of these hearings was the demonstration of wide-spread corruption amongst Sarpanches, Engineers and Officials overseeing expenditure on public works . While such corruption is known to exist at all levels of government, these meetings served to identify specific officers forced to admit to the mismanagement and embezzlement of public funds. Jun sunwais have given villagers the opportunity to raise objections, voice opinions and bring corrupt public practices out in the open. They have ultimately ensured that villagers are involved in the planning, execution and monitoring of development processes. Jun sunwais brought enormous pressure on the government to pass the right to information act, and this was finally done in May 2000. Citizens now have the right to inspect all government expenditure in the name of public works at the level of the state, the district and the village panchayat.

Boond Boond Se - Every Drop Counts (2002)

Client / Financial Support: Social Work and Research Centre
Duration: 16:30 minutes

Water scarcity is a fact of life in many parts of Western India. This scarcity is growing steadily worse as consumption increases in both cities and the countryside. It is now increasingly obvious that the government policy of installing hand-pumps and of providing water through water-tankers will be insufficient to deal with a crisis that can only worsen in the coming years.

In an attempt to provide a viable alternative to such stop-gap arrangements, the Social Work and Research Centre, Tilonia, Rajasthan, together with a number of associate organizations, has worked to revive traditional methods of rainwater harvesting. Individual or community tanks are being built in a number of villages in Central Rajasthan, with the objective of collecting and storing rain-water as and where it falls. In addition village water bodies are being deepened and water flows from catchment areas diverted, such that the amount of water available to the village community is maximized, and the run-off from the sparse rains kept to the bare minimum.

Boond Boond Se documents a number of instances of successful Rainwater Harvesting in Central Rajasthan.

Kamla: India's First Woman Solar Engineer (2001)

Client / Financial Support: Social Work and Research Centre
Duration: 10mts.

Many parts of rural India do not have electricity and electrifying these areas is not a high priority for a resource-starved government. Solar electrification is a possible alternative to using conventional, expensive sources of energy.

This short video profiles Kamla from the Barefoot College - Tilonia, which has taken the lead in providing training and technology to villagers to enable them to install and maintain the infrastructure required to solar electrify villages in India. A key objective of the program, in addition to providing the technology to tap solar energy, is to demystify and decentralize this technology. Demystification takes place through the learning process - one that is almost entirely hands-on, with little time spent in front of a black-board confronting unintelligible figures, notations and language. Instead, as Kamla demonstrates, learning takes place by taking apart a transformer and by making mistakes in putting it back together. Once the engineer returns to her village, there is an utter lack of dependency upon non-local engineers.

Kamla is India's first woman barefoot solar engineer. Along with others like her, she is at the forefront of a revolutionary attempt to provide electricity to the poorest sections of the country.

Reaching for the sun (1992)

Client / Financial Support:Social Work and Research Centre
Duration: 15 mts

The city of Leh used to depend on a single source of power to meet its electricity requirements - the Stakhna Dam. But the dam remained frozen for six months of the year, and heavily silted during other times. It was proving to be an unreliable source of power. Other parts of Ladakh also went without electricity largely on account of the enormous expense associated with conventional electrification.

Simply laying the cables, particularly such that they can deal with heavy storms and high wind velocity makes electrifying rural Ladakh a logistical and financial nightmare. The absence of electricity results in drastically curtailed lifestyles, with particularly significant impacts on education and health. But Ladakh has a resource that many other parts of the country lack. Even during the height of the winter, Ladakh is blessed with abundant sunlight. Solar electrification was the obvious means of electrifying Ladakh.

Using the Barefoot College philosophy as explained above, SWRC trained villagers from all over Ladakh in the assembling, installation and maintenance of kits that would convert solar energy into electricity. Reaching for the sun documents this remarkable exercise.

Water in a Desert (1992)

Client / Financial Support: Social Work Research Centre, Tilonia
Duration: 20 mts

During the early nineties the hand pump was seen as a major technological development capable of providing drinking water to villages across the country. SWRC undertook to install handpumps in remote areas of Ladakh, including the Nubra Valley, Leh town and other remote high altitude areas. Because of the extreme cold in winter -- - 40 degrees at its worst - water sources such as the Stakhna dam and numerous rivers would freeze over, making water unavailable to large sections of the population.

Installing hand pumps was the obvious answer. Water in a Desert documents the challenges involved with this project, including some of the innovations that SWRC undertook in dealing with the unique topography and climate of the region. Sand is omnipresent in this high altitude desert, and as a result, conventional drillings for hand pumps were unable to maintain a rigid bore. Inevitably, sand columns would collapse into the hole being drilled, rendering the drilling effort useless.

SWRC came up with an innovative solution to the problem: they used two casings, an outer casing that kept the sand out, and an inner casing through which water was pumped to the surface. A second problem was associated with the extreme cold of the winters, when temperatures dropped to - 40 degrees. At such temperatures, resident water in the casing above and just below the ground would freeze and expand. Burst pipes were the sorry story of Ladakh's hand pumps. SWRC dug a pit 4-5 feet deep from the surface, and drilled a little outlet valve for water to drain into the soil. By eliminating stored resident water from this section of the pipe, hand pumps could be used throughout the winter. Hand pumps are used throughout the country today, enabling large sections of rural India to access potable drinking water.