Crowdfunding and Sustainability of Watermills in the Himalayas: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract This study visualizes crowdfunding as a strategically important tool for the revival and survival of watermills in Uttarakhand. There are 500,000 watermills in the region from Afghanistan to Myanmar, between 100,000 to 200,000 in India, and 60,000 in Uttarakhand. These watermills have the potential to generate electricity up to 65000 MW at the rate of 2500 MW/hr that could be monetized at $ 17 million per hour in the northern mountain ranges. These watermills are also used for grinding purposes leading to multidimensional ways for sustainable livelihood. These watermills contribute to the social capital of the region immensely. The Government of India has supported these traditional knowledge-based activities by providing capital support and fiscal incentives. It is observed that despite the availability of government funds, the water mill owners lack finance for revenue expenditure, which is one of the significant barriers to the sustenance of water mills. Repair and maintenance of watermills, support to scale-up activities and other marketing activities, etc. are examples of recurring revenue expenditure. The goal of this descriptive paper broader view of the concept and evolution of crowdfunding based on a bibliometric tool. It analyses all crowdfunding-related publications in Scopus-indexed journals. It analyses the parameters number of papers published during 2011-2021based on various parameters. This study identifies the donation-based method as the least researched method of crowdfunding. It is also brought out that the donation-based method will not be useful in the case of repetitive crowdfunding initiatives.