Nepal is one of the hilly and landlocked countries in South Asia. The terrain of Nepal varies from mountainous in the north to plain in the south. Approximately 86% of Nepal’s 29 million people live in the rural areas, and about half of these (51%) live in such remote areas where neither a road nor the national electricity grid will reach them for decades to come. Most of the villages in the mountains and hilly region are situated on the middle/upper part of the terrain. As the water source lies on the lower part of hills, most of the villages lack sufficient water for drinking and irrigation. Only limited sources of water is available on the upper parts like streams, while there is sufficient water on the base of such hills. Thus there is not the easy access of the pure drinking water in remote hilly rural villages which lie on the upper part of the hills.
The villages of the hilly areas where the people are suffering from the unavailability of sufficient drinking water, the proper provision of irrigation in such a place is also still beyond the imagination.
Although Nepal is rich in water resources, it is far away from providing electricity to all people. So people can’t even use electricity for pumping water to their villages and also normal pumps cannot pump water to large height. And even if electricity is available, it is not affordable for the local people for water pumping purpose because of higher cost of electricity and high rate of load shedding (frequent power cut-off). Further, to pump the water to a very high level, motor installation cost and running cost won’t be affordable for the people of rural hilly region of Nepal.
“Air compressor based water pumping for remote Nepalese village” could be the appropriate technology in such a region. Taking care of sustainability, affordability of people and considering in the geological structure, this project can change the living standard of Nepalese people.
Significance of the project in the line of achieving United Nations Millennium Development Goals.
1. With the aid of easy and rich access to the adequate water, people can increase their annual production, and also people having the sustainable farming and lesser lands can grow more crops which they can store for dry season for self-purpose and sell the excess to the market. Since the technology develops enormous water head, very lar ge area of land could be irrigated and thus cultivated with the same existing stream/river water. Thus, through prosperous agro-trade resulting in the upliftment of the socio-economic status of a single family; community and then of a whole nation. Hence it could be a sound initialization in the alliance for the eradication of the poverty and hunger.
2. In Nepalese society where women(50% of total population) are especially assigned with the responsibility of households and kitchens, it’s their compulsion to do the physical labor by walking up to a far distant water source to fetch the water, which could be even several times a day. It’s definitely a matter of pity from the novel humanitarian aspect to have/see such a biologically sensitive (weaker) gender; relative to men; engaged in such physically laborious efforts raised due to compulsion. Also the easy and prompt access to the water helps to prevent the water-borne and other diseases caused by either inadequate water consumption or by the consumption of poor quality water that could be made available at lesser efforts (or near).Hence, this air compressor based water-pump helps to provide the door-to-door service for water supply and thus proves to be a perfect solution to such problems by saving time and labor; hence providing a warm caring hand to the maternal health as well as prevention of water-deficit diseases.
3. Apart from this, usually small children are very energetic and restless. So because of this, they are frequently asked by their elders to fetch water rather than spending time by playing. Nevertheless, this also causes a direct impact on those children who can spend their time on going to school for education; only if the long time-consuming task of fetching water is not assigned to them. Hence for Nepalese villages, where students have to walk several hours to reach school for study, they can early arrange their time for leaving to school and also for those children who are restricted to go to school just for the reason of task of fetching water, they can get an opportunity to learn the letters and be literate. Thus, this water-pump technology also serves to meet one of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals of achieving universal primary education.
4. Next, there are several villages in the green hills of Nepal, located in higher level than that of flowing streams and rivers. Meanwhile, this water pump technology with zero energy concepts and functioning by utilizing the stream water, proves to be a best alternative to the costly electric motors and generators. Hence the technology is economically wiser in itself and also becomes to be a great boon to the modern civilization facing the future energy-crisis threats, and thus ensures the environmental sustainability.
5. Besides the above mentioned achievement, the most important achievement we got is establishment of international friendship we built up due to the reason of this project.
Therefore after all, by saving the time on fetching water this air compressor based water pump technology help people to involve themselves in some else creative/income generating tasks. Hence, it’s favorable in time value concept, so it’s socially acceptable, too.
