Govt's Gobar-Dhan initiative is a commendable plan: Letter to BS

It is crucial to save cows and their pastures, reads a letter to BS

Apropos “Gobar-Dhan Yojana rolled out to generate wealth through waste in rural areas: PM” (February 25). The government’s Gobar-Dhan initiative is a commendable plan to utilise gobar to generate clean energy, as well as increasing rural incomes through the sale of gobar. However, for this to succeed, it is crucial to save cows and their pastures. According to Professor Virendra Kumar Vijay of IIT Delhi, the dung of 10 milking and non-milking cows daily (amounting to around 100 kg), can generate 4m3 of bio-gas (5 kWh) daily, which is sufficient to meet the daily cooking, lighting and other heating requirement of a family having five members. The leftover dung slurry from the bio-gas formation, can be used for organic farming.

For automobiles, Vijay has developed bio-methane (purified and compressed biogas from cattle dung, among other important sources of biomass), whose mileage (24.11km/kg) is almost same as that of CNG (24.38km/kg), with relatively lower emissions of carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide.  I would like to add that, it is also important to promote draught animal power in itself.

C V Krishna Manoj, Hyderabad