Technology- Bio-gas in China

has shifted to the provision of credit, inputs, and extension services for the small and subsistence farmers. As a result of this, the scheme claims to have increased the cultivated area in some villages as land which was not considered worth labouring on is now cultivated by their poor owners. Also, as a result of the better crops, ' the poorer farmers have been relatively freed from having to borrow even the seed from the rich. The moneylender- cum-lradei's hold on the poor villager via the grass trade has also been loosened. Where earlier the villager would repay a debt of Rs 10 with grass worth, say, Rs 100, today he has been encouraged to sell the grass directly and repay the loan with the appropriate rate of interest. All such work falls very much within the ambit of the official programme. But, by striking at the roots of village exploitation the volunteers of the scheme have earned the wrath of those who lost thereby.