Que: Kindly tell Energetica India readers in brief about yourself, your educational background, and how has been your journey so far?

Ans: I was always fascinated by understanding individuals, communities, and institutions -- their motivations, purpose and functioning. So, I started by pursuing my bachelor’s degree in Sociology and master’s in social work from the University of Delhi, and as its extension, I pursued the Humanitarian Leadership Program at Harvard Business School. My professional journey was an extension of my educational pursuits. I held multiple leadership positions with Plan International, where I was the Country Director for Vietnam and then moved on to become the Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, where I oversaw the strategic planning within the region and managed operations in 12 different countries.

I then served as the Director of Youth Learning with The MasterCard Foundation, an independent, private foundation based in Toronto, Canada. My responsibilities included a global grant-making strategy across more than 50 projects within the portfolio. After that, I got the opportunity to manage one of The Rockefeller Foundation’s flagship initiatives in India, Smart Power for Rural Development (SPRD). In this role, I was fortunate enough to lead and direct a full range of activities, partners, and resources of the initiative to provide affordable and clean energy access to over a million people in India, and thereby improve livelihoods and village economies.

Currently, as the Managing Director of the Asia Region Office, I am responsible to advance the Foundation’s policy, advocacy, grant-making, and partnerships in Asia.

Que: Shed some light on the initiatives taken by The Rockefeller Foundation in the energy sector in India?

Ans: At The Rockefeller Foundation, we approach energy access holistically, in that we recognise the impact reliable energy has on livelihoods, their incomes and the need for energy to eliminate poverty itself. The Foundation’s work in the distributed renewable energy space is working towards supporting a more equitable transition to renewable energy in India and around the world to meet global climate goals. Our work in energy access and economic development addresses the unfolding impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change on the world’s energy poor. It will also help turn the tide decisively in favor of renewable energy projects in India and worldwide - substantially reducing CO2 emissions in the near term, both by greening the grid and disrupting the pipeline of fossil fuel plants that are planned or under construction.

With this philosophy, our Smart Power India (SPI) program was established. It was our first large-scale, renewable energy initiative, created to support last-mile electrification in three states i.e. Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand, with high concentrations of energy poverty. By providing technical support to local renewable energy mini-grid companies and promoting an ecosystem for local enterprises to thrive, this institution is working towards driving reliable rural electrification. Over the last five years, SPI has been field-testing new technologies and business models that can take decentralized renewable energy from an off-grid alternative to a mainstream component for widespread rural electrification.

Among all people whom SPI serves, small businesses that now get power through these mini-grids have seen an almost 50% increase in their revenue and their income. Since many of these are women-headed enterprises, those economic gains are reinvested in the welfare of their children, in their nutrition, access to school, and efforts that lift entire communities. To date, SPI has supported the establishment of 400+ operating mini-grids benefiting more than 300,000 people in Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh and kick-started last-mile electrification pilots with utilities in Bihar and Odisha. We plan to touch 18 million lives by 2023.

In November 2019, we also launched a Renewable Microgrid program in partnership with Tata Power. Its goal is to empower 25 million Indians – establishing a new model for partnerships in this sphere.

Que: How was your experience leading the Smart Power India initiative?

Ans: Despite India having achieved universal electrification in 2018, many rural households still do not have access to a reliable supply of electricity with shorter hours of power supply, frequent power cuts and voltage fluctuations still a reality for many households.

It fills me with immense pleasure when I look at the India program and personally get to witness the successful entrepreneurial stories, especially those of women, like Ruby Kumari, a seamstress in Bihar, who thanks to reliable power, rather than shutting down during Covid India-wide lockdowns, she was able to grow a mask sewing enterprise to protect her community and support her family. We saw that with reliable electricity powering a community, everything changes: Children go to school in the day and study at night. Hospitals and clinics remain open around the clock and store life-saving vaccines and medicines, while shops stay open later. The economic benefits multiply and lift communities, regions, and countries.

I am a strong believer that the greater participation of women in the energy value chain can help in more effective access to energy. As women are part of different social networks vis-à-vis men, their inclusion can help businesses reach out to more households. As consumers, women can make more sustainable choices, and tend to have a bigger say in household energy decisions. Including women as key stakeholders in shaping the renewable energy value chain can help in better and more efficient design, production, distribution, and sales of sustainable energy technologies. Today, in this era of unprecedented crises—including the coronavirus pandemic—we have a responsibility and remarkable opportunity to harness the power that can lead to a more equitable, safer world for women.

Que: In your view, what could be the reason behind few women found in leadership roles in the renewable energy space?

Ans: I believe that gender equity is both a necessary condition and a strong catalyst to achieving a green and equitable recovery. We have seen examples of women being left behind by the world’s response to new challenges. This pandemic was no different, globally, women have lost jobs at almost twice the rate as men, making up 54% of overall job losses, despite accounting for 39% of global employment, as per Mckinsey. With schools closed and many people working from home, pandemic lockdowns have significantly increased the burden of unpaid care. Of unpaid work, women’s share is nearly triple that of men. Yet, the global response remains largely oblivious to the systemic barriers facing women across the globe. Regardless of where you are in the world, women earn less, save less, have limited access to social protection and are more likely to be employed in the informal sector, indicated by the United Nations report. Their capacity to cope with the economic shock, due to fewer resources at their disposal, and limited influence over the decision‐making processes is therefore significantly less than that of men.

Currently, only 20 percent of parliamentarians in the Asia Pacific are women, as per the Inter-Parliamentary Union report. It is pivotal that women representatives are included and consulted to advocate for policies with a gender lens to create favorable conditions such as social safety nets for women workers. Representation of women in high-up political positions can create conditions for an equitable distribution of leadership roles in various sectors.

In order to solve the above-mentioned issues, women need to be able to be at the forefront of green recovery. Gender-sensitive recovery strategies will be critical in bringing about a transformation in the renewable energy space. Therefore, we must bring gender considerations from the margins into the mainstream.

Que: In your view, what are the biggest challenges in the distributed renewable energy space in India?

Ans: We at The Rockefeller Foundation recognize that Distributed Renewable Energy (DRE) holds the key to reliable energy access and economic empowerment. By comparison, DRE encourages resilience and self-reliance (Atma-nirbharta), by placing the assets in the hands of communities themselves as well as the innumerable environmental benefits.

In India, some of the challenges that we came across while working in the DRE space are:

* The market lacked a structure for DRE transactions, backed by committed blended capital partnerships.

* Integrating and scaling transformational Ag-Energy was another such challenge. We had to form SME investment partnerships via existing and new relationships to drive electricity demand towards 300kWh/capita/year in smart power communities in a way that improves gender equity, nutrition and sustainability.

* There also lacked a focus on ending energy poverty via DRE.

* We had to significantly reduce deployment costs to achieve a sub-15c/unit mini-grid price by scaling technology and procurement breakthroughs.

Que: How more women participation can be achieved in contributing towards a sustainable future?

Ans: We need more voices from women in the ecosystem and the opportunity to put in proactive efforts for a sustainable and equitable future. For this:

• We must pay specific attention to the sectors where women have high representation but are under-paid, including the informal sector, labor-intensive manufacturing services and small & micro-businesses. And then we need to ensure that support services measures rolled out by the government aren’t gender blind.

• There exists a principal need to equip women entrepreneurs with the skills and resources to act as a catalyst for the upliftment of their communities. This will generate assets and skills to transition from subsistence to sustainable livelihoods.

• Women’s representation in political leadership can create conditions for a level playing field, especially in times when women’s needs can be easily overlooked. Women representatives must be included and consulted to advocate for policies with a gender lens to create favorable conditions such as social safety nets for women workers.

Que: What keeps you motivated?

Ans: My source of motivation comes from the continuous and ongoing efforts to inspire and create a large-scale human impact that is sustainable and equitable. The Foundation’s intense focus on innovation by identifying and accelerating breakthrough solutions in the form of ideas and conversations keeps me going.

Also, the true impact on the ground that our work has and its ability to transform lives and bring an actual tangible change to millions of people’s lives is a huge source of motivation. Every girl who can study under a bulb, every woman who can run a business as she has electricity, every farm that can invest in sustainable agricultural practices with reliable energy, every village that is powered by clean energy, every village that contributes to the country’s economy is inspiring and is my endeavour as well.