Gobar gas plants at homes provide a shield to residents of Belagavi’s Kattanbavi amid cylinder shortage

Households across the country may be feeling the heat of domestic cylinder scarcity. But the residents of Kattanbavi, a small hamlet near Belagavi, have little to worry about. Most of the houses in this village of around 1,200 people have gobar gas plants. They were set up 30-35 years ago, but are still functioning.

“I think there are about 300 houses in the village and 80 per cent of them have gobar gas,’’ explained Rahul Kande, a resident. Villagers refer to the gobar gas units as ‘Deena Bandhu’ units. These units have had multiple benefits — they have provided them with fuel for cooking and lighting, the effluent of cow dung slurry has served as fertiliser, increased per capita animal rearing, and kept the village clean.

“We keep reading about LPG cylinder shortage in Belagavi and Hukkeri. But we are not worried. Few people have cylinders here,” says Bhairavnath Kothekar.

Kattanbavi lies at a distance of around 20 km from the district headquarters and 4 km from the Maharashtra border. Most of its residents are farmers or sheep rearers. Most houses have cows, buffalo, and sheep. The animal waste and human waste are fed into the gobar gas plants through underground pipes, untouched by human hands. Over time, the size of gobar gas units has shrunk, and they can be put up in less than a square metre area in the backyard.

The units were introduced by members of the NGOs Jana Jagarana Samsthe and Khadi Gram Abhivruddhi Sangha, who have been working in Kattanbavi and surrounding villages since 1990.

Shivaji Kaganikar, the 76-year-old Devraj Urs awardee, has led the initiative through volunteers. “We must have convinced at least around 20,000 farmers across Belagavi district to put up gobar gas plants,” he says, adding, “Earlier, our focus was on gobar gas plants. But in recent years, as the technology developed, farmers have put up gobar gas plants that accept inputs from toilets”. Most of the old and new plants are in Belagavi, Hukkeri and Khanapur taluks.

Mr. Kaganikar, who hails from a nearby village, came to Kattanbavi in 1990 to run a school for dropouts. “At that time, villagers were cutting down trees for firewood. I was worried about it. Late Srirang Kamath, a freedom fighter and founder of KGAS, introduced me to gobar gas units. S.K. Desai Kadolikar sent me to Nashik for training in the construction and maintenance of gobar gas units. Armed with this knowledge, I began spreading awareness about it. I began going to every house with my friends, asking people to stop cutting trees and use gobar gas instead. With the financial assistance of the Janajagarana Sanstha, cow dung gas units were installed in all the houses that had cattle. This encouraged some others to begin rearing cattle,” he said.

At the start, there was little awareness about this technology. There was also a feeling that the units were only for big farmers. “We fought hard to change that mindset. Now, the village is nearly self-sufficient in fuel,’’ he said.

Mr. Kothekar said that earlier his family had 5-6 cows and buffaloes. But now we have only one cow, but still our gobar gas plant is running, he said. His brother Maruti, who set up a new unit a few months ago, has spent just around ₹25,000 on it. He has connected his toilet to the unit.

Mallavva Pavale, a homemaker said maintaining a unit is easy. “We put a bucket of slurry in the morning and another in the evening. There is no need to do anything else,’’ she said.