Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from January 18, 2026

Come Sail Away

  I came across a report in a local English daily from last year stating that the riverine island of Majuli on the Brahmaputra does not have a single functioning river ambulance. One vessel is reportedly in a completely dilapidated state, while two others are considered repairable, at least for now. Around the same time, I was pitching for CSR grants to build a purpose-designed shallow-water ambulance using my bamboo composite boat-building technology, powered by a diesel-solar hybrid propulsion system. To strengthen my case, I used images from Dhubri in western Assam, where three identical fibreglass boat Ambulances fitted with large imported outboard motors were lying beached on a sandbank, slowly disintegrating. Each of these vessels had been either purchased by the government or donated by state PSUs, at a cost of at least USD 5,000 apiece. They were rarely operated due to the high running costs of their fuel-hungry petrol outboard motors, compounded by fuel pilferage by staf...