Jagrutiben Samanthbhai, a dairy farmer from Mujkuva village in Anklav taluka of Gujarat’s Anand district, put up a bio-gas plant at a cost of Rs 24,000 two years ago. She was till then finding it difficult to dispose of the dung from her four buffaloes; each of them produced 15-20 kg on an average daily. However, since the installation of the bio-gas plant, not only has dealing with dung become easier, but today, she has also stopped refilling of her LPG cylinder as well as fetching firewood for use as household cooking fuel.
Jagrutiben’s bio-gas plant was set up with the support of the National Biogas and Manure Management Programme (NBMMP). Implemented by the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, it offers 40% subsidy on the project cost. The effective investment on the 2 cubic-metre bio-gas plant, thus, worked out to around Rs 14,400. On this investment, Jagrutiben now gets the biogas equivalent of two refilled LPG cylinders, whose unit cost is about Rs 750 after factoring in a direct benefit transfer of Rs 150. Simply put, Jagrutiben’s entire investment was recovered in less than a year. What’s more, the 1.2 tonnes of slurry generated as byproduct, and sold as organic manure at Rs 0.75-2/kg, fetches her additional monthly income of Rs 900-1,200.
A household bio-gas plant mixes raw dung and water in equal portion. The mixed dung gets decomposed in an anaerobic digester and produces bio-gas and slurry.
In late-2017, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) organised 40 women dairy farmers from Mujkuva to form a self-help group (SHG) by the name of ‘Jai Ambe’.
The NDDB is planning to expand the Mujkuva model to other villages,.
The NDDB has so far set up roughly 1,000 bio-gas plants across 12 states under its National Dairy Plan and is targeting a total of 10,000 in the next five years.
Read more of this in a detailed report by Deepika Yadav and Harekrishna Misra published in The Indian Express... (Link given below)
