Humanities Project: Machines and Indian Problems

August 26, 2010 at 8:11 pm · Filed under Machines ·Tagged Farming, India, Machines, Robotics, Robots, Security, Underground water detection

Present project focuses on Machines and their relevance pertaining to Indian problems. It discusses some of the main problems related to farming, security, defense and disasters which I think are the areas where machines have importance in their role. The present report is written with my own experience meeting farmers in a village, sharing their thoughts, knowledge gained from every day’s news regarding security, defense and disasters happening in the country. As the man power is ceasing in the area of farming machines have gained extreme importance and the reasons for ceasing of man power is dis cussed briefly. There are lot of security issues and threats in our own country and also every year some where or the other disasters have been happening. If we find better engineering solutions for these problems, we can give a better future for millions of citizens.

The main production in India is from farming and major industry still is based on agriculture. So, I decided to go to a village and share farmers’ thoughts and opinions on the role of machines in farming. It’s a small village named Mangalpahad in Nizamabad district, 200 km from the city of Hyderabad. Here, main crops produced every year are rice and sugar cane though sugar cane production is reduced for reasons which will be discussed later. To satisfy the needs for the increased global population, mechanized agriculture is becoming popular at a very fast rate in Indian villages. Decrease in skilled labor is also playing a major role in the need for mechanized agriculture. The first machine used in farming is plough which is to be pulled by animals such as oxen or horses. Now days, as the animals are decreasing in number in the farming area, need for low cost fueled machines are becoming very important. If these machines are given robotic technology, farming procedures can be improved further. The following section discusses my experience with the farmers and their views in a documentary fashion.

I reached the village in a pleasant evening with a lot of doubts in my mind on how the farmers and the villagers receive me for asking about the role of machines and robots in farming. My father has 10 acres of farming land in the same village, so it was not hard for me to get a companion who could guide me to farmers’ houses and help me with my slang. I met farmers with experience ranging from 2 years to 50 years. I was surprised to see that they know the farming procedures followed in foreign countries and they all explained me the importance of machines in present day farming which was the same purpose I was there for.

The companion was the first person giving his views and answering patiently for my questions. He owns 2 acres of farming field and he cultivates in another 10 acres field of my father. He invests 6000 INR per an acre for every crop produced. Labor strength working on the field depends on farmer and it ranges from 30 to 200 people. Each person is paid 110-150 INR per day of work. Now, because of the government policy “Food for Labor” which is paying the same amount, most of the people are not showing interest in farming. This is where the need for machinery is arisen mainly. After about half an hour of our conversation we were all set to roam the village to know more about farming. Every farmer we visited had given me more and more insight and every one was very enthusiastic about explaining their profession.

We visited a house where there were two farmers owning 13 acres. After chatting for a while we went on to talk about machines. The most important part of farming where machines are needed is in the process of planting. Even though we have the technology and the means to plant using machines, we don’t have farmers with the ability to use them. Farmers need to be trained well to use the present machines and also the existing machines have defects like reverse planting. After we drank mineral water given by their children (most of the villagers are now drinking paid mineral water daily) we went to another house to visit three more farmers.

Of those three, one had farming experience of 50 years while another had about 3 years. They said that if cost of labor was 2500 INR per acre, using machinery would bring it down to around 1200 INR, which is less than half the labor cost. One more process where machines are found to be useful is grass cutting. Sugar cane was another main crop produced earlier and they had stopped producing it because of difficulties in cutting the canes by them selves. Earlier, factory organizations used to come for cutting which is not the case now. So, farmers had to spend extra 300 to 400 INR per acre for cutting. One of the three farmers had planted a crop of sunflowers but they got damaged due to strong wind currents. So, rice seemed to be the most appropriate crop at present taking into account the cost of production, profit and weather conditions.

After an hour of discussions relating to many interesting things, we set off for another place during which we chanced upon a village tavern (Kallu Batti in Telugu), a place where farmers come to unwind in the evenings after a hectic day’s work. The tavern seemed to be a nice place to hang out for some time because most of the farmers were sitting there in a good mood to discuss. They told me about a machine called Power Tiller which is used for cultivation and it had not been into use in the village. When asked about power solutions I mentioned about solar power. One of them immediately caught me while I was talking and told me about a boring pump running on solar power which was a part of experiment at some other place in the same district. One more interesting thing they said was about usage of solar power in farming in Saudi Arabia. It was an amazing experience for me to see such positive effects of globalization right in front of my eyes.

It was 10:30 pm when we met the last farmer and he seemed to be well educated. He explained every thing regarding farming procedure right from the beginning to the end along with costs, though they seemed to be redundant for my purpose I listened to him carefully and noted down all the things before asking about machines. Power Tiller is used to cut wheat in North India and it is not that useful to cut rice which is the main crop in southern country. Power Tiller can also be used to cut Sunflower, Peanuts etc. He also mentioned about Cash Crops which are grown now days for better profits. The long lasting conversation ended at around 11:45 pm and I returned home, with a lot of satisfaction, which is 20 km from the village.

Every farmer I met, I asked how ground water would be detected. They do not follow any scientific procedure and they go only by experience though Geologists have not so reliable way of scientific detection which gives less than 50% correct results of their attempts to discover under ground water. For making every hole for under ground water, it costs around 20,000 INR. To illustrate the importance of under ground water for the fields I got a great example from one of the farmers. He tried almost 60 times for water, each time paying 20,000 rupees, and he got succeeded in his 61st attempt. After coming to college I asked one of my professors who was at that time teaching the course “Transmission Lines and Antennas” about electro magnetic methods for detecting under ground water. At first, he told me about a purely nonscientific way called “Water Divining” which is successfully followed most of the times through out the world. Then, he explained me three scientific ways which are not very accurate:

• An electric way based on finding resistivity of the soil using 4-point probe.
• Using magnetic fields to find layer characteristics which is used in Cole mines
• Ground Radar which is expensive

If we can find better engineering solutions to the problems of farming in the crop production process we can be helpful for 70% of Indian population. Because of increase in the labor costs, unavailability of skilled labor and very less yield versus population ratio, usage of machines is certain in the crop fields. These machines also have to be cheap and handy for the farmers. Most of the farmers claimed that with the present machines maximum of three people need to be present at the machine per acre. If robotic technology is also incorporated into the machines, we can increase yield to very high quantity. At the same time we have to take into account the power consumption and environmental pollution issues using machines. Usage of solar power seems to be very effective and promising simultaneously. These are some of the problems that every engineer needs to look into and come up with innovative and effective solutions. The following small paragraph briefly deals with problems related to defense, disasters and security issues.

For every nation defense and security are important issues and there is no need to specially mention about the need for unmanned vehicles, autonomous robots, all terrain vehicles etc. We can see a lot of robots coming into existence with very complex control systems in the area of defense. Building of such machines needs a lot of engineering and innovation. We can see a lot of competitions happening all around India every year organized by many universities/institutes, public organizations like DRDO, ISRO etc. in which lot of colleges go for organizing competitions which are not so important like Sumo Wrestling. Instead, they can have competitions related to defense and security which have some purpose in them. These types of competitions also attract many of the engineering and robotic enthusiasts to participate through which the need for innovation can be exploited from young engineers. Need for small robots, water robots in the times of disasters are worth mentioning because we see earth quakes, cyclones, floods happening more now days. Also, due to increase of security threats in the country, accurate bomb detecting equipment and all terrain robots are needed very much. Though metal detectors exist, they can not detect advanced explosives. A solution to detect these explosives is still a big challenge for the scientists and engineers.

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