Integrating New and Sustainable Technologies involving Elimination of Poverty: Business plan for four regions of Gujarat

08 Aug 2011 07 Dec 2012
The concept of Integrating New and Sustainable Technologies involving Elimination of Poverty (INSTEP) centre was developed by TERI with the objective of providing technologies and services to the rural community, where the community would be involved in planning, implementing and monitoring the functioning of the centre. VITO’s goal is to bring about a transition that will vitally strengthen the component of clean technologies in the rural development process through profitable and sustainable ventures. VITO recognizes the concept of INSTEP for implementation and in collaboration with TERI focuses on experimenting and consolidating alternative pathways for delivery of clean technologies for providing basic and livelihoods related services to the deprived sections of population. As part of the collaboration various clean technologies are proposed to be promoted through different delivery mechanisms to arrive at scalable pathways. The collaboration is envisaged as a long term effort to promote clean technologies by phased initiation of dissemination pathways.

The collaboration is proposed to be initiated through a strategically planned pilot for establishing an INSTEP Centre that will promote dissemination and use of clean technologies. The objective of the pilot is to evaluate the contribution of the INSTEP centre in promoting clean technologies, while improving the quality of life of the target population. With primarily five kinds of stakeholders such as: the local population, Civil Society (including NGOs), Corporate, TERI and local entrepreneurs, the INSTEP centre was conceived as a profitable model, where the profit is also shared among the communities.

In the above context, the ultimate aim of the project is to replicate and upscale the pilot to cover several clusters of villages within a region. It is envisaged that a network of such centres would aid in promoting sustainability at a regional level through the exchange of services, information and products within the network.