With three PhDs—including one in biochemistry under Nobel laureate Erik-Nils Nilsson in Sweden—Tiwari says India’s independence struggle has had a deep impact on his life’s work. “It taught us dignity of labour.”

An affinity for tribal communities led him to write a report in the 1980s for the government on the lack of amenities in 5,000 forest villages. That led to the government allocating Rs20 crore for improvements.

In the early 1980s, as he toured a village in eastern Madhya Pradesh stricken by water poisoning, Tiwari noticed how jatropha seeds, stuffed and burnt inside bamboo hollows, provided light in villages where no electricity existed. About 200 people of the Baiga tribal community had died and Tiwari, trying to reach the inaccessible village of Chadha, turned to villagers to escort him some 12km after sundown.

“There were two torches,” he recalls. “One in the front leading the way and one following behind. The light lasted the entire journey.”

On his way back, he packed some seeds and passed them onto the Kanpur-based Harcourt Butler Technological Institute. But, not until he became the head of the Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education, and chancellor of the Forest Research Institute, did Tiwari begin serious efforts to collect jatropha seeds, engaging alumni students posted in different parts of the world.

“Beggars are sometimes at an advantageous position,” he quips. “They are loyal students, and all you needed to do was to ask.” At last count, he has obtained seeds from 31 countries, including several in Africa such as Tanzania, Kenya and Nigeria. He says his first experiment with planting jatropha was near Allahabad, in 1995. Brick-making activity on the banks of the Ganga had ravaged the area and he suggested planting jatropha to control land erosion.

After retirement, he and his wife have been involved with his non-profit Uthan Centre for Sustainable Development and Poverty, to which the Sir Tata Dorabji Trust donated Rs2.2 crore in 2003. Uthan now raises jatropha saplings for distribution and has involved 700 farmers under the programme around Allahabad.

With the Tata trust funding, Uthan set up an oil-extracting plant. Uthan also owns a mobile van with an oil expeller installed, which tours 96 villages around Allahabad so that people can extract oil for free. In return, Uthan keeps the oil cakes and the residue, which are then passed on to some four dozen institutes for research and development work, including the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore and the Indian Institutes of Technology in Kanpur and Delhi.

“Whoever requests for it, we give them on the condition that the results are shared with us,” says Tiwari. “One of my major responsibilities was not to disturb the food security and grow something that is hardy in non-crop areas.”

Jatropha and Tiwari’s methods are not without critics. Some have been quick to point out Chhattisgarh’s project is more hype with little happening on the ground. They say fallow land cannot produce sufficient yield of seeds and is commercially unviable.

The huge expense—about Rs100 crore every year since plantation by various government agencies started—is also being viewed as a huge waste. Others say a multiple-crop policy would have generated more income for the rural community than depending simply on jatropha.