Residents of Boro Robi and the army construct the dam

Sept. 12: People power is lighting up households — literally — at Boro Robi, a nondescript village in North Cachar Hills district.

Ignored by the Assam State Electricity Board for its remoteness and inaccessibility, the village has discovered light with the help of the army and the District Rural Development Agency.

Residents of Boro Robi joined hands with the army and the DRDA last year to build a water-harvesting structure on the Boro Robinallah stream as the first step towards setting up a mini hydel power plant. Army engineers provided the expertise, the DRDA arranged for funds and the villagers toiled to construct a 12-feet high dam that can store 3 lakh litres of water.

The task was not as easy as it may sound. It required months of hard labour and determination for the villagers to accomplish the task.

“Once the dam was constructed, we thought it should be turned into a mini-hydel project and the villagers accomplished this task with the help of army engineers,” DRDA project director H.P. Rajkumar said.

The army engineers also designed the turbine required to generate power. The hydel project now generates 68kv of electricity, enough to light up the 35 households in the village.

The entire project — from the construction of the dam to generation of electricity — took seven months to complete. The total expenditure on the project, including the cost of transmitting power, was Rs 18 lakh.

Rajkumar said the power project would be handed over to the villagers after its formal inauguration. “They will not have to pay for the use of power. They will just have to maintain it from time to time by lubricating the turbine.”

Although the project has not been formally inaugurated yet, all households were connected to the power-generation plant immediately after its completion. “We did so at the advice of Governor Ajai Singh,” the project director said.

The DRDA intends to upgrade the project in the long term to provide electricity to the adjoining Krishna Nagar village, which has 100 households.

The governor, who is the interim head of the North Cachar Hills District Autonomous Council in the absence of an elected body, was so impressed with the project that he asked the DRDA to replicate the success story elsewhere in the district, too.

The DRDA has earmarked three more spots for similar projects. “Apart from providing electricity, the dams will provide constant supply of water and facilitate pisciculture,” Rajkumar said.

About 20,000 fish are being reared in the Boro Robi reservoir.