Mahatma Gandhi has asserted that pre-condition of happy society is that all the means of production of primary needs of the people must be in the hands of the common masses. This applies to all the primary needs such as rice, sugar, jaggery, oil, cloth, footwear, and also electricity and power. Gandhiji was deadly against heavy and giant industries. So he was against giant thermal power plants also. He once asserted that cables of transmission lines can be only used by common people for wrapping around neck and committing suicide. He also once asserted that we (People of India) should learn appropriate use of steam and electricity for common masses. So it is very clear from Gandhiji's stand point that steam power should be produced and utilized at very small scale level in the farms and villages wherever it is to be utilized.

I am 75 years  mechanical engineer and understood Gandhiji's thinking at my age of 20 years. It is quite clear that by promoting huge thermal power plants, no happy society is created. It is very much evident that huge thermal power plants create huge disparity in the society by making available huge power to very big factories owned by very rich people and on the other hand 50% population of India have no power connection in their homes even for single bulb. Entire rural India and agriculture sector is facing huge shortage of electricity and they are suffering injustice since last 70 years. This is naked result of giant thermal power plants. Our government has grossly neglected Gandhiji and fact is that government is betraying Gandhiji since last 70 years. So every engineer working for giant thermal power plants is committing sin against humanity, no matter innocently and inadvertently.

So my humble and hearty appeal to all such engineers is to just look the vision of Mahatama Gandhi which provides extremely simple and cheap solution for creating happiness in villages and throughout India. Based on Gandhiji's thinking, I developed the idea of tiny thermal power plants and tiny solar power plants. I developed Steam Engines from 5 HP to 50 HP. Very simple steam boilers can be manufactured in villages. Steam engine + Boiler becomes the simplest tiny thermal power plant for mechanical power. 90% power used at present is in the form of mechanical power. So electricity generation can be conveniently avoided. I am exporting such tiny devices up to 20 HP in developed countries of Europe, USA, Australia, Canada etc. In the following paragraphs you can study the eye-catching advantages of Tiny Thermal Power Plants as against Giant Thermal Power Plants. So my appeal to all thermal engineers working for giant thermal plants is that you should divert your attention from giant thermal power plants to tiny thermal power plants. It will create very quickly huge prosperity and unimaginable happiness in entire India and almost ideal homogeneous society can be created by decentralizing thermal power plants to farms and villages. Out of your huge budget, you can initially divert 10 to 20% budget for establishing tiny thermal power plants in farms and villages. It is extremely simple and very very cheap and highly efficient. So please ponder over the following paragraphs and if your conscience is convinced, then please go to the direction of Gandhiji. Please note that the following thinking is based on my 50 years of practical experience and it has been widely appreciated internationally by many many engineers, humanitarians and scientists working internationally. As per my vision, in next 30 years, millions of tiny thermal power plants will be established and giant coal based thermal power plants will lose their relevance in the economy and will start closing down, remaining as skeletons of madness of human mind.

It is quite possible that even though most of the engineers understand and grasp Gandhiji's vision, they may not be able to change the policy from giant power plants to tiny power plants. There is a quick solution for providing power to entire India in Gandhiji's vision. As per my own estimate, within 5 years only, abundant power can be produced wherever it is to be utilized. i.e. in 5 HP to 20 HP mechanical power simply by steam engine and boiler. So while working in giant power plant, you have a huge scope of making 10 million rural boilers of 500 kg/hour or smaller capacity. You must be well versed in boiler making and if you can help to rural people to make boiler locally for self use by farmers, I am sure that every thermal engineer can earn millions of rupees and still they get blessings from entire rural India. This is not Utopian thinking but this is based on my sound experience of earning millions of rupees from rural technology. I have exported my tiny products based on Gandhiji's thinking in 102 countries and really we have earned millions of rupees and I am also getting blessings from all over the world. So if someone understands Gandhiji's vision and if his conscience is inclined to work for it, I have a pleasant solution for this dilemma as above.

Now please read the benefits of tiny thermal power plants described below. If interested, you can read my many articles in my web site.

HUGE SCOPE OF TINY THERMAL POWER PLANTS

Liberalization of power generation has opened vast opportunities for small generation capacities in villages. Steam energy is coming back very fast as blessing for local distributed generation.There is bright scope of establishing 10 million tiny thermal power plants of 10 kw capacity in farms and villages of India.  Tiny thermal power plant to which we call tiny steam power plant specifically is the simplest power plant consisting of only two equipments i.e. small biomass boiler  where steam will be produced by burning any biomass and steam engine which is revolved by steam to give mechanical power to  run any machine such as water pump for irrigation, rice huller for rice milling, flour mill for grain grinding, sugarcane crusher to extract sugarcane juice, oil expeller to get cooking oil or generator for electricity and lighting. Such tiny steam power plants will have the following eye catching advantages:-

1. Rural electrification is unsolved problem since last 60 years. 80 million poor homes have no electricity in villages of India. Giant thermal power plants with transmission and distribution lines involving thousands of crores of rupees will not solve this problem fully even in next 20 years. Installing Tiny Steam Power Plants is the quickest solution at minimum cost. All un electrified villages can be electrified in 2 years at 20% cost of the budget being spent by the government for this purpose. For tiny thermal power plant, no transmission lines, no distribution lines, no losses.
2. Tiny thermal power plants will be very cheap. 10 kw steam power plant costs only Rs 4 lakhs which may become cheaper by mass production. Considering cost of transmission and distribution lines, transformers, losses in it, losses in converting electricity to mechanical power etc, investment in tiny power plants will be only 20% than in giant thermal power plants. So with same investment, about 5 times capacity can be built in a very short period of 3 years only.
3. Tiny power plant will use steam engine which is simple technology. The technology of steam engine is not a new technology. We should remember that entire British empire was built and expanded in the world by using steam engines in boats and steamers, in vehicles and railways, in war equipments, in factories, in textile mills and so on. Steam engine is so much simple that even in villages, it can be produced on lathe.
4. Tiny power plants with steam engines will greatly contribute for water lifting problem. Entire rural India is facing heavy shortage of electric power in agriculture sector and as electricity is never available in time, farmers are losing their crops. This can be avoided and problem can be solved by Tiny power plants with steam engines.
5. Tiny steam power plants can be operated on biomass, agricultural waste, crop residue, forestry waste, wood etc. So farmers can produce their own power. So farmers will be independent from the harassment and tyranny of electricity authority. THIS WILL BE THE BIGGEST HAPPINESS TO VILLAGERS. In India, about 20000 MW power can be produced from 280 million tonnes of biomass through tiny steam power plants.
6. Tiny power plants with steam engines will greatly encourage co-generation with Combined Heat & Power application in oil milling, sugarcane crushing, rice milling etc. Waste heat of steam engine can be gainfully utilized for ice making and refrigeration without any running cost. So tiny steam power plants will be highly efficient and blessing to villagers. The huge amount of heat created by burning coal is simply wasted in giant thermal power plants which is not possible to use it. Huge amount of cooling water is required in giant thermal power plant simply to dispose off heat energy in atmosphere which creates huge problem of water and environment.
7. Tiny power plants with steam engines will be established in villages and hence it will greatly save transport expenses of agricultural produces from villages to cities. So import of diesel will be reduced and traffic burden on highways will be reduced.
8. Tiny steam power plants will greatly contribute for rural development, income and employment generation in villages and homogeneous development of the country. Benefits of this can not be measured in rupees. In fact, this will be real development.
9. In most of the industries, direct mechanical power will be more convenient and generation of electricity will not be required. So investment cost of generators and motors will be saved. Efficiency of direct mechanical power is always higher than converting in to electricity and using electric motors for mechanical power.
10. Tiny boilers of tiny steam power plants are designed to accept any type of biomass fuel. It can work for coal also. So small steam steam power plants will be blessing to small farmers. it will get more and more importance particularly in agriculture and agro processing industries. In case of giant thermal power plants, design of boiler is for specific type of coal only. Any type of coal can not work there. So if it is designed for the coal of Jharkhand, it can not work with Meghalaya coal.
11. Gestation period of giant thermal power plant is 3 to 4 years and that of atomic power plant is 10 years, while tiny power plant can be installed in maximum one month.
12. Tiny steam power plants can be converted in to tiny SOLAR power plants in future simply by adding solar concentrator which will become cheaper and affordable and economically viable in a few years only. Giant thermal power plants can not be converted to solar power plants. So when solar power will be abundant, huge investment made for giant thermal power plants will be simply wastage.

Thus we can bring real revolution in rural India by establishing 10 million tiny steam power plants.