A Dream of Flight: Innovators in Rural Aviation

Innovators in Rural Aviation

Part of the Khabar Lahariya long-form series “Sound Fury & 4G”.

It’s Makar Sankranti – also known as Sakarat or Khichdi in Bundelkhand. People are taking dips in the Ganga; making special ladoos, vadas, and other dishes; and buying fresh gud by the kilo. The sky is alive with kites of various shapes and sizes, made of scrappy bits of paper or brightly coloured synthetic materials. As farmers see winter’s darkest days receding behind them and celebrate the season’s harvest, the kites soar upwards with all their hopes for a good year ahead.

When young men across India look up into the sky and fantasize about flight, traditionally it’s the kite that comes to mind as the vehicle of their imagination. But as technologies change and become more widely available, the country is also dotted with young dreamers tinkering with drones, gluing together remote control or RC models, and even welding recycled parts into rudimentary aircraft.

Possibly the most famous Indian aircraft hobbyist is Amol Yadav, a commercial pilot who, in 2016, finished building a small propeller plane on the rooftop of his Mumbai apartment building. Yadav managed to display the plane at a big exhibition for Prime Minister Modi’s Make in India initiative, and the story was widely reported by the Indian and foreign press. Though his plane was never flight tested, Yadav’s efforts garnered him a Rs. 35,000 contract with the Maharashtra government to build an aircraft construction hub in the state in 2018.

Yadav may be the most successful of his tribe, but “the desire to fly after the fashion of birds”, as Wilbur Wright wrote, is spread far and wide across the country, going by videos on YouTube, online forums for enthusiasts, and occasional news reports. There are helicopter hopefuls: a failed pilot in Bihar who morphed his Tata Nano into a chopper, a Class 10 dropout in Kerala who made one out of a Maruti 800 engine, a Rajasthan man who built one from junk, a Manipur mechanic, a welder in Assam, a garage owner in Maharashtra. Whether these contraptions can actually fly is besides the point. Many of these inventors, as well as the hobbyists making drones out of garbage, or RC planes, lack formal training or education – for them the thrill of trying to get off the ground is enough to elevate life from ordinary to exceptional.

The aspirations of Bundelkhandis are no less lofty, and over the past few years we’ve met two young men within a couple of hours of Banda who share this dream of building flying machines. Though less than 100km apart, the contrasts between their stories illustrate how finding a supportive community can mean the difference between setting one’s sights on the horizon and a failure to launch.

KL first met Ramchandra, called Narad, in Tindwari – about 25 kilometres from the district headquarters of Banda. In February 2017, Narad was 21 years old, a junior school dropout who had been working with motors since childhood. Earlier that year, he had made his maiden attempt to fly a homemade helicopter, built out of – among other things – an old motorcycle engine.

Narad, a wiry young man with a talisman around his neck, doesn’t have much formal education; he never understood the importance of learning to read and write or pursuing his studies. “I saw a lot of people studying but they still had no work, no prospects. I felt there was no point,” he told us. “I figured if a person applies their mind they might be able to get ahead.” Riding in a helicopter was a childhood dream, no doubt spurred by Uttar Pradesh’s brand of chopper-fuelled politics every election season. Narad didn’t see any way he’d be riding in one of those – his parents sold vegetables in the market and it wasn’t like they had money lying around. But, he thought, maybe he could make himself a basic craft.

Narad managed to scrounge together various parts, including the old motorcycle engine, sometimes travelling to places like Fatehpur and even Kanpur to source them. Bit by bit, he put together his craft, ultimately spending up to about Rs. 40,000. Finally, on a sunny morning, he put his machine in gear and – according to local reporters gathered to watch him – lifted about eight feet off the ground, flying a distance of some 200 meters.

His limited success didn’t quite have the effect he’d hoped for, however. The laws governing homemade craft in India are both strict and obtuse, and the legal aspect of what he was doing was the last thing Narad had considered. The Tindwari police were not pleased, and arrived quickly on the scene to confront him. Narad claims that they accused him of developing the chopper to spy for Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as part of a plot to assassinate Prime Minister Modi.

Later, police clerk Vimal Pandey told KL it was a question of public safety. “You can’t have flying objects going out of control in the sky,” he said. “What if it fell and killed people? Who would be responsible?”

Whatever the reason, Narad was so dejected about being banned from flying his helicopter that he broke it apart, strewing its pieces around his yard. “His mind was spinning all the time,” his mother Sukhraniya told us. “He couldn’t think properly, couldn’t focus on anything. So he left town.”

Narad stayed away from Tindwari for several months. He travelled to Mumbai, to Goa, in search of exposure to the wider world. “I wanted to see what was happening in this country, in other countries,” Narad told us later, after he had returned to Tindwari. “I went to take an interview, to find out what kinds of things were available out there.” He even hoped to travel to China, but didn’t quite make it that far. He found that wherever he went, “people keep copying each other. I haven’t found a single novel item – I’d like to make something different that isn’t already in the world.”

“I get a lot of ideas in my head,” Narad told us in 2017, “to make this or that. But it’s all useless.” He added, “I have a lot of dreams, but don’t get the material I need – I can’t even say what exactly it is I want.” With his confidence shaken, Narad focused on building up his electrical repair business. “I do motor work, my income is taken care of with that,” he said. “I save Rs. 2,000 per motor. I’ll put together a lakh or two little by little and eventually start buying supplies to complete my work.” Though he’s put his helicopter together again, he hasn’t tried flying it after that first attempt. “It’s not a good idea to get entangled with all that, when one isn’t successful,” Narad said. “Maybe later if I have more power, we’ll see. The police let me down, people let me down. They made fun of me, but I’ll show them someday.”

About 80 kilometers away in Maudaha, Hamirpur district, 17-year-old Ramji Sahu is less defensive, more confident, barely pausing between rapid sentences as he told KL late last year about his working model RC plane.

“I was standing on my roof over a year ago, and I saw a real plane pass overhead,” Ramji said. “I thought to myself, why can’t I make this? I told myself I’d do it.” He turned to the internet, researching the basics of aerodynamics and the electronics required to control a model plane. “I saved up some pocket money, bought some of the parts, and designed it,” Ramji recounted. The motorized parts were ordered from ecommerce sites like Amazon and Flipkart, and Ramji built the body of the plane itself out of thermocol, which was the material most easily available to him.

“The first time I tried to fly it, a year ago, it failed,” Ramji said. He improved the design and tried again without much luck. He returned to the internet again and again, finding new flaws and fixing them with subsequent design improvements – between taking his plane out to the field behind his school to test it out. “It flew briefly and fell. I learned why it fell. I kept researching. The plane broke 20 times – 20 times I tried and failed, but I didn’t accept defeat.” Finally, Ramji’s 21st flight was successful, and witnessed by over a hundred people who had gathered to watch him. “They were all very happy – they started shouting. My hands were shaking with excitement,” he recalled. “Now I’m an expert in flying it, it’s easy.” He’s flown the plane as far as two kilometers and to an altitude of 200 meters—which is the height at which it becomes too small to see in the sky and has to be brought back.

An RC airplane may seem like a toy compared to Narad’s helicopter, but for Ramji, who was busy studying for his 12th Board Exams, it’s the foundation for a more solid future. “My dream is to become an electronic engineer and get a government job, making more inventions and things that help people, help Indians,” he said. While studying hard is one concrete step towards this goal, he’s also started his own YouTube channel, walking others through his process, in Hindi.

Ramji’s attitude towards electronics and flight is more practical than poetic. He told KL that he has also made a drone with many useful applications. “Farmers can use it to help with farming, or to put out fires, or deliver supplies. For example, if someone has a medical emergency, but there’s traffic or the path is obstructed, I can use the drone to send them medicine to save their life.” He’s particularly proud of doing this in a low budget. “The drones you’ve seen in the market, at weddings for example, they cost about 1.5 lakhs and their weight load capacity is zero. They’re just for a camera. The drone I’ve made for around Rs. 15,000 is pretty good – we can load it with 2kg of material and drop it.”

Unlike Narad, Ramji is also pretty savvy about how to politically position himself and his inventions. Several times, he mentioned the possibility of loading up his drone with bombs. “I keep watching the news, I keep seeing soldiers losing lives,” Ramji said. “I keep thinking that just sitting at home I could prevent soldiers from losing lives. Bombs or guns can all be fitted remotely to my drone. It will take care of enemies without loss of life.”

Ramji has the support of his parents, siblings and teachers. He’s participated in various competitions and – besides going to the gym – is pretty focused on studying further in order to develop his passion.

Despite all this effort, it’s difficult to predict whether Ramji’s dreams will come to fruition. There are plenty of opportunities: India is set to be the world’s third largest aviation market by 2024 (according to IATA), and there have been major investments in the sector by both the government and private companies, with aviation a major focus area for the Make in India campaign. Yet the cautionary tale of Jet Airways, as well as airlines posting major losses in the last quarter, are not hopeful signs, even if these wider economic ups and downs have little bearing on the future of small-town dreamers like Ramji and Narad.

Since 2018, the government has been promoting UP as an “electronics and IT hub”, with promised investments and a planned Electronics City – but these drivers of growth are typically centered around NOIDA or along the Yamuna Expressway, far from the state’s rural districts.

UP has the highest number of colleges in the country (6447 private and government colleges, according to the 2018-19 All India Survey on Higher Education – AISHE), and the highest student enrollment, but ranks 7th in the country in terms of number of engineering and tech colleges. The standards of many of these are not up to the demands of industry. According to a widely publicized Aspiring Minds report, over 80 percent of Indian engineering graduates are unemployable. (A more conservative report estimates that 57 percent of engineering graduates are employable.) Graduates, especially those from rural areas, lack the soft skills, like speaking English, that would help them get an edge.

For Narad, building his helicopter is a quirky pursuit, for now subsumed into the practical entrepreneurial demands of running his shop and earning a living. Ramji’s approach is more pragmatic as he holds on to the promise of education and a government job, hoping his 12th results will be enough to let him compete in a crowded, often under-funded field, where a degree is no longer a guarantee of employment. His colourful little RC craft keeps his dreams aloft for now. “When I walk out with my plane a crowd usually gathers,” he told us. “People ask, will it fly, will it fly? And I say, of course.”

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *