56 years after Independence, 56 per cent of rural India still has no access to electricity. Maybe it’s time villagers placed power in their own hands and produced their own electricity. Here’s a look at how villages can get 'electrified' themselves:

GIGANTIC GOBAR POWER
Imagine 15000 cows providing 50000 kgs of gobar a day to power a biogas plant! That’s the proposed Pathmera village gobar gas plant in Jalore (western Rajasthan), which will be the biggest biogas plant in the world. It will generate 72,000 units of electricity a day and supply power to nearby Jodhpur and some areas in Gujarat. Waste from the plant will be used as manure. The biggest biogas plant is currently in America.

BUY YOUR OWN STREETLIGHT
Now for as little as Rs 1400, you can have your own streetlight in Assam. The streetlight’s bill will be hooked to your personal meter, so that’s a burden of the state government.

A hundred such "personal" streetlights lit up sleepy little Nalbari. Next in line is Tezpur, which had its streetlight connections cut off due to non-payment of dues.

SUNNY ISLANDS
Today, solar power is finding its way into the villages of the Sagardweep Islands of West Bengal. Nine solar plants supply power to 6000 people, with twice that number waiting in the wings.

The power plants are operational in the evening for only 5 hours, but that is still more than 4 hours supplied by the islands’ diesel power plant, which is making huge losses. Power is steep at Rs 8 unit (the diesel plant charges Rs 2), but it is still gaining acceptance. Villagers are using CFLs and other energy conserving methods. Earlier, most of the villagers earlier relied on kerosene lamps. But even kerosene is scarce and expensive in open markets.

MICROHYDEL, MAXPOWER There are half-a-million watermills in India, called gharats. They work much like a hydroelectricity project does. They’ve been hailed as technological marvels and were among the first human efforts to tap water power. Every gharat is capable of generating 5 kilowatts of power a day. So theoretically, gharats can generate 2,500 megawatts of electricity, which is quite a lot. The Uttaranchal government declared watermills as small scale industries and allowed owners to upgrade them for the production of electricity.   WHEAT TO WATTS: This gharat, which is being used to grind wheat, can be upgraded to generate electricity