You buy a car or any other thing when you see someone else having it. So people will only buy a thing when they see a system in somebody's house and that takes time. The corporate people have taken the poor people for a ride. So that needs to break and the trust needs to be created that this system will actually work.

Energy Engineering started first in IIT Kharagpur in 1983 and mine was the third batch. It was definitely not a popular course. It was basically an amalgamation of nuclear, mechanical, chemical engineering, etc. But I don't think it was a big factor because if we look, most of them joined the IT sectors and not the energy sector.

If you look at a farmer and his daily expenditure on existing energy services, it is much higher on an incremental delta basis. And then there is an emotional cost of not providing their kids with the right to educate. If you calculate these costs in economic terms and create a financing mechanism for them to buy it, the emotional delta cost is much higher compared to their household.

Substantial progress was made in spreading our foreign trade to other areas. Our total trade with Northwest Europe in the first 8 months of last year was 42.3 per cent above the corresponding period the year previous, and our total trade with Asia was up 13.5 per cent. For the first time since 1919, the United States in the first 8 months of 1956 accounted for less than 60 percent of our total trade.

Our expertise is solar energy and we don't want to focus on other forms and we never push for solar form everywhere like say in upper hill areas where eco-hydro or biogas is more viable.

The difference between both is that social entrepreneurship has a much more financial transparency. There is no financial viability and that is where a corporate sector makes a difference because we maintain a balance between both the financial status and the social service.

Comparatively there is a much more awareness about energy resources in other countries and especially in the US and European countries. Also people there are much more serious about what they do. Here, people are more concerned about getting a 'degree' rather than this.