The term home and rural appliance might sound a bit odd, but what it is meant by it is a home appliance, which can run effectively in rural areas. There are many appliances, which adorn the modern home making the life of the modern person easier and less time taking. In rural areas however, the home and rural appliance is still a story of the future. Why? Because most of these modern home appliances run on electricity, which is stable and cannot take too much voltage fluctuation. Hence, the home and rural appliance remains a myth for the rural areas, since there is no electricity and where there is, the voltage fluctuation is terrible. The basic requirement for any modern home appliance is electricity. If electricity is there, the rural person is as happy (and capable to buy) to use modern home appliances as any city person. Hence, the transition of technology is solely dependent on availability electricity that can maintain and run home and rural appliances. This means that not only there should be electricity, but also that it should be able to support the running of the appliance.
The Transition of Technology to Grassroots Level
Often, the electricity available is of very low voltage and hence, incapable of supporting the functioning of any of the modern appliances. In other cases, there is so much voltage fluctuation that the home and rural appliance get burnt within no time. Hence, the crux of the matter is in providing adequate power supply. There have been many experiments in electrifying the rural areas in such a manner that it would support the use home and rural appliance by rural households. Those areas, which were close to the city, were easily electrified and the economists were proved right when they said that the rural populace would be as eager to use home appliance as any city person would.
For those areas which were less accessible and far from cities, solar and wind power were tried out alternatively, but failed miserably. However, where such power was complemented by mechanical power generation (i.e. power is generated by peddling a cycle or running on a treadmill) things worked better. The rural places in developed countries have adopted this method successfully and today they are able to electrify their homes and run a majority of home appliance of the electricity thus generated.
The problem still is unsolved for rural areas in under developed countries where such transfer of technology is not possible. Some would argue that people in such regions might not have the purchasing capacity for such appliances; however, this is not true. There have been many pilot projects where it was clear that given a choice the rural person would love to buy a TV, a mixer or even a washing machine. Hopefully, the scientists of the 21st century would bring an answer to the electrification of such remote areas in the near future.