Return to Gaya, Bihar

My team and I returned to Gaya in March for a second visit to Bahsa Pipra and Badil Bigha villages, the sites of one of our rural electrification projects. This was a shorter visit, and like with Dhankya I didn't take as many photos the second time around. Still, I did manage shoot some fun portraits of a few men in the village showing off their motorcycle as well a a few snapshots of daily life in Bihar. Enjoy! 

A man sits on a motorcycle outside the Gaya Junction train station in Bihar.

A street food vendor outside the Gaya Junction train station takes money from a customer.

Look! A foreigner! 

A resident of Bahsa Pipra village, Gaya, Bihar.

A resident of Bahsa Pipra village, Gaya, Bihar.

These guys were really excited to have their portraits taken with their motorcycle. 

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Bihar: Gaya, Patna, and Purnea

In early February, my team and I visited the state of Bihar to conduct a field survey for two village we are hoping to electrify. The trip brought us to the state capital Patna, Gaya district, and Purnea district as we visited the villages, evaluated community outreach partners, and saw existing off-grid solar projects on the ground. Given Bihar's reputation as a lawless and underdeveloped state, we were happy to complete the trip without being kidnapped by Naxalites - the Maoist insurgents active in the area. In retrospect, we were pleasantly surprised that state was nearly not as defunct popular lore led us to believe (although we did have to spend a night in the Patna train station after one of our trains was delayed by eight hours).

That being said, much of the state still lives in poverty: it is humbling to visit villages without access to the electrical grid and where the value of the camera around my neck could easily be more than a household's annual income. The upside of the trip was that we were able to see solar starting to spread to off-grid areas through local NGOs, startups, and module distributers. These photos don't show much solar, mostly because I don't find solar panels or LED lights to be terribly visually compelling, but hopefully off-grid electricity access can be the topic of a future photo essay. In the mean time, here are some scenes from my travels. Enjoy! 

A rickshaw driver pulls a woman through evening traffic in Purnea, Bihar.

A street food vendor on the side of the road in Purnea, Bihar.

An elderly man in Bahsa Pipra, Gaya, Bihar.

Boys peep into a small window opening to see our team reviewing the village map.

Two boys from Bahsa Pipra village, Gaya district, Bihar.

Mapping out the village boundaries in Bahsa Pipra village, Bihar.

A map of Bahsa Pipra village in Gaya, Bihar. The man who had the map told us that few maps of the area existed, and that he wouldn't give this copy to us even if we offered 10,000,000 rupees.

A women's self-help group meets in Badil Bigha village, Gaya, Bihar. The self-help group provides women with savings accounts and small loans - creating a link between the village and the formal banking system.

A rickshaw driver pulls a passenger along the road in Patna, the capital city of Bihar.

A man lights up one of the many rows of candles in Bodh Gaya, Bihar.

A sitting Buddhist figurine in Bodh Gaya, the location where Siddhartha attained enlightenment.

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Portraits of Dhankya

In early December, my team and I visited Dhankya, a village about 30 minutes outside of Jaipur in Rajasthan. Dhankya has been selected as a model village under Prime Minister Modi's Sansad Adarsh Gram Yojana program, which requires every member of parliament to adopt a village and coordinate development efforts to make it a model village by 2016. My team is working on providing solar power to households and community buildings to supplement electricity from the erratic national grid.

I suspect Dhankya is representative of a number of villages in India - places where residents are close enough to city centers to have access to urban amenities and service sector jobs but where agriculture is still the primary economic activity. Compared to other villages in India, Dhankya is relatively well-off, enjoying good road connection to Jaipur and literacy rates higher than average for Rajasthan. However, the village still faces a number of serious issues like underfunded public schools (science isn't taught at the secondary school level), a rapidly falling water table, and poor sanitation practices. Through the course of our field visit I photographed many residents of the village, giving a look at some of the faces of semi-rural India. Enjoy!

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Delhi, The Taj, and Rajasthan

I've moved to Delhi as part of the International Innovation Corps, a yearlong fellowship that places American and Indian young professionals into Indian public sector institutions to work on scalable solutions to social problems. I'm working with Central Electronics Limited, a state-owned solar manufacturer and the first domestic manufacturer of solar cells and module in India. My team is focusing on building a rural electrification program with an emphasis on smart solar microgrids. I've been here Since mid-July, but between finding an apartment, getting over the culture shock, and settling in at work I haven't had time to post photos. The photos below are from around Delhi, a visit to the Taj Mahal, and a field visit to Rajasthan I made for my work. I have at least three blog posts worth of photos in the pipeline, so keep your eye out for more photos coming soon!

Cycle rickshaws in East Delhi

An obligatory photo of the Taj Mahal

Tourist take cover during a heavy rain at the Taj.

An unelectrified home within sight of a high-voltage transmission line in Purkhawas, Rajasthan. The high cost of connecting smaller villages to the grid has left many homes in the area without electricity.

A women from Purkhawas, Rajasthan crouches next to her stove.

Goat herders in rural Purkhawas, Rajasthan pose for a portrait.

The Jodhpur old city seen from above.

Men from a small village in Purkhawas, Rajasthan sit on a mat while being interviewed by my team members.

The long-distance bus station in Jaipur, Rajasthan at 5am. We stopped here to to catch a painfully early connection back to Delhi.

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