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Prithvi Asthana

20 August 2025 at 5:20:30 pm

Desi method saves LPG at RSS camp

Use of biomass wood stove helped in reducing high cooking cost Mumbai: When the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) decided to hold a 21-day training camp in Jalgaon in the first week of May one of the biggest concerns for the organisers was availability of fuel. The organisation needed two LPG cylinders of 19 kg each for making three meals for 255 participants and 50 managers daily. It would have cost them Rs 6,000 daily and the cost for 21 days on meals on would have touched Rs 1,26,000. It...

Desi method saves LPG at RSS camp

Use of biomass wood stove helped in reducing high cooking cost Mumbai: When the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) decided to hold a 21-day training camp in Jalgaon in the first week of May one of the biggest concerns for the organisers was availability of fuel. The organisation needed two LPG cylinders of 19 kg each for making three meals for 255 participants and 50 managers daily. It would have cost them Rs 6,000 daily and the cost for 21 days on meals on would have touched Rs 1,26,000. It was a time when availability of LPG cylinders was a concern and a costly affair. India’s LPG supply was hit because of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The government had hiked the price of commercial LPG cylinder by Rs 993. Then came a desi solution. The RSS decided to use a biomass wood stove that uses renewable energy rather than LPG. The main fuel for this stove was ‘wooden blocks’ prepared from cotton, cow dung or turmeric trees (turkhati). The market rate of the ‘wooden bricks’ is Rs 3 per kg or Rs 150-200 per sack. An RSS swayamsevak from Dhule Rahul Kulkarni has designed this biomass wood stove. He operates an industrial machinery manufacturing company called as ‘Essential Equipments’. The company manufactures renewable energy products like solar thermal systems, bio-gas plant, biomass wood stove, etc. The biomass wood stove proved to be a high success. Its use reduced the daily cooking cost to mere Rs 300 saving around Rs 1,19,700 during the camp period. Not only it helped in reducing cost but also to protect the environment being a source of renewable energy. “We had put a lot of research and development behind this stove, and it was already available. Amid the crisis the stove came in handy to us, and I am happy that we were able to solve this problem. It helped in reducing the cost drastically,” Kulkarni told ‘The Perfect Voice’. Dattatreya Hosable, General Secretary of RSS, who visited the camp for three days, also acknowledged the innovation in cost cutting and saving environment. “I appreciate the efforts taken by the swayamsevaks amid the LPG crisis. Henceforth, RSS will use this method in training camp across the country and I myself will take this solution to all the places,” he said.

Leading the Co-operative Movement

Vikhe-Patil

For the Vikhe-Patil family, whose interests go beyond politics, party doesn’t really matter. In the past seven decades, various members of the family have been part of all major parties with the objective of keeping their hold over their home—Ahmednagar, intact.


 While the family flourished under the aegis of Balasaheb or Eknathrao Vikhe-Patil who was a union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government, it was his father to took the first steps towards public life. Vithalrao set up Asia’s first ever sugar co-operative factory soon after Independence and brought prosperity to the rural population.


Balasaheb set up educational institutes with schools, medical and engineering colleges which increased the family’s influence over the region. As a Congress leader, he represented Ahmednagar in Lok Sabha seven times and left the Congress twice to lead different fronts.


 It is the said that the Vikhe-Patil didn’t want to stay away from power for long.


In the 1990s, Balasaheb quit the Congress, once again, and joined the Shiv Sena to become a union minister in Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s cabinet. His son Radhakrishna too joined the Shiv Sena and was made a minister in the state cabinet while the Shiv Sena-BJP formed the government until 1999. Not hesitant to jump the ship when in distress, the father-son duo returned to the Congress when it won the 1999 elections in the state.


Radhakrishna stayed with the Congress until 2019 but switched over to the BJP in 2019 when it was apparent that the party was to get another tenure in power. His son, Sujay, a doctor by education, also joined the saffron party and won the Parliamentary elections that year.


The women of the family are also active in the local politics and social activities of the region. Radhakrishna’s wife Shalini has been a member of the Zilla Parishad in Ahmednagar.


Another young woman of the family, Nila who is Radhakrishna’s niece is actively involved in politics, but thousands of miles away from Ahmednagar. Half Swedish by birth, she joined the  Green Party in Sweden and was appointed an advisor to the prime minister’s office for the first time in February 2016.


The family’s clout could not ensure a win for Sujay in the 2024 Lok Sabha elections which he lost to the NCP-SP’s Nilesh Lanke. The fourth generation of the family to be involved in public life, Sujay is now set to face Lanke’s wife in the upcoming assembly elections.

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