While the “Green” fever is known to strike the architecture of corporate buildings, educational institutions, sports stadiums, residential apartments, hotels, convention centres, manufacturing plants and so on, a Green prison is, unarguably, quite unheard of. The Indian subcontinent is the proud home to the world’s first eco-friendly prison, and what’s more – It has been built by its own prisoners. This clearly exemplifies the Green awareness and the in-depth participation towards Green in the country.

Recently, the inmates of Central Jail in Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, India successfully developed and installed a centralized hot water system, which was later inaugurated by Shri Raghavji, Finance Minister of Madhya Pradesh.

Close to 40 LPG cylinders are emptied daily for heating water used in preparing tea and meals for all the prisoners in the Bhopal Central Jail. The solar hot water system provides 2,500 litres of hot water - enough to supply all the hot water needed to make tea and meals for 3,000 inmates. This efficient solar-powered hot water system reduces the need for LPG cylinders by 3.5 in number, per day. Besides this, children of women prisoners will get hot water during winters from the 2000-litre water heater.

This idea was the brainchild of the jail director, Prem Lal Pandey, who has a master’s degree in Radio Physics and Electronics. The first attempt by the inmates was to construct a 200-litre solar water heater. Following the success of this endeavour, the capacity was scaled up to 2,000 litres of hot water.

Bhopal now plans to equip all eight of its central jails in Madhya Pradesh with similar solar systems, as well as deliver 1,000 litres of water per day to 22 district jails and 500 litres per day to 92 subordinate jails in the state. Madhya Pradesh gets ample sunlight and high temperatures, which are conducive to the harnessing of solar energy.
Furthermore, the prisoners are now equipped with a new skill - solar water heater manufacturing – which they can exploit to earn a living.