Saroj and Dhauli look happy because they can pack complete meal in the tiffin’s of their children, when they go to school.  Shared Bio-gas plant between their two house-holds has made it easier for them to prepare breakfast, cook vegetables and chapati to pack for the lunch before the school time starts.

Saroj and Dhauli are sisters in their early thirties living in Banhar village of Behror Block, Alwar district, Rajasthan. They are married to two brothers and they live in adjacent houses. They constructed a 3 Cubic Square Meter Bio Gas plant recently. Both families use the shared Bio Gas Plant for their house hold requirement.

Saroj remembers the old days when the two sisters were married and lived in a joint family. Soon, the two couples decided to split from joint family and started living in their respective nuclear families. Today Saroj has five member family with two children, mother-in-law and her husband. While sharing her experiences she said, “Two of my children go to school. Before helping them to get ready for the school I have to do many other house hold work.  I have two buffalos and some other cattle to take care of. Every morning, I wake up at 3.30 and milk the buffaloes. After feeding them, I start preparing lunch for my children. Once the children are gone to school, I start cleaning the house and the compound for the cattle. I could hardly get time to rest until I prepare feed for the buffalos late night. Before biogas plant was installed, Uppla (cow dung cake) used to be the main fuel for cooking along with dry firesticks.”

In my family we have never heard about bio-gas before the HPPI team members told us about it. They told us the benefits of establishing a bio gas plant. Saroj said, “initially I was not sure that I could manage to use the bio gas because I was unaware of technicalities of the bio gas. The HPPI team arranged a visit for us to see a bio gas plant in nearby village. I found that it is easy to use. Later we decided to construct a bio gas plant at my home. It was difficult to manage the cost. Me and my sister Dhauli discussed the idea and decided to build it collectively. We both invested equal amount of money for the construction and we got the equipment support from Humana team.

Now we both are frequently using the bio gas, and it has helped us a lot in saving our time. Before we had to spend a lot of time on collecting firewood. Sometimes we had to go far off to collect it and it used to become difficult to fetch it from that far. Because of that I couldn’t manage to prepare complete meal for my children’s lunch. I often used to skip giving them cooked vegetable in tiffin.  Now it has become easy and less time consuming to prepare breakfast and lunch for my children and family. My daughter also had to support me in house hold work, but now I could manage it on my own and she can have more time for studies. I feel happy when I see her focusing on her studies. I want her to complete her education and live a good life. In our society the girls were not so much encouraged to go to school but now it is changing. Talking to the people during the bio gas construction has built confidence and I have become more aware of health. The HPPI team also talked about establishing a nutri garden and using the bio slurry as organic manure. I have enough space in front of my home and will soon grow vegetable garden there and also use the organic manure in our wheat and pearl millet (Bajra) crop. Many women come to our house to see the bio gas plant and I feel proud that I am the first in my village getting benefits of bio gas. I always encourage them also to build a bio gas plant. Thanks to my family for taking the good decision and to Humana team for their encouragement and consistent efforts for supporting us during the whole process.