India’s villages are going solar.

Remember our post on Orissa’s New Keringa? It was India’s first village to have 100% solar lighting, in 2009.

Earlier this week, in Goa, over 50 households in the village of Quisconda, Quepem district, were provided with solar home lighting units to replace the kerosene lamp. Designed and packaged by the Quepem Salesian Society, these units (called Bosco-Plus) contain a 20 watt panel, three CFL lights and a charge controller. The kit generates two-three hours of additional light, which, for the moment, is sufficient for this remote village’s simple needs. The Salesians trained the youth of the village to do the electrical wiring and maintenance of the units. Each household had to invest a marginal amount, to inculcate a sense of ownership with the project. The majority of the funds, though, were procured through donations. While the whole village will benefit from access to clean lighting, the children are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries. They can bid the kerosene lamp goodbye and continue with their studies under a bright, clean light.

In the village of Ujjaini, in Thane district (Maharashtra), over 111 households don’t have access to light. Ujjaini is one of 30 ‘dark’ villages in the district, impoverished and far removed from any vestiges of development. Thanks, though, to an amazing project by the students of HR College in Mumbai, the households here now have access to solar tube lights ending centuries of darkness.

The story of ‘Project Chirag’ is an incredible one. Conceptualised by SIFE HRC (Students in Free Enterprise at HR College), this was one of the ideas to create sustainable business models in urban and rural India. The five-point program (which includes health and sanitation, education and economic upliftment) had to necessarily begin with electrification. Because without light, everything else would be difficult, if not impossible.

In collaboration with the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI), SIFE HRC identified tribal villages in Maharashtra and chose Ujjaini because it seemed the most primitive. With the help of the local government, the volunteers visited Ujjaini and earned the trust of the villagers.

They then found a manufacturer who agreed to sell them a unit for Rs 3,650 each. This would include one LED-powered lantern, one tubelight, one battery encased in a protective cover, two solar panels and wiring.

At a total project cost of over four lakh rupees, going ahead seemed daunting. So, the students turned to their peers for help. With a “Rs. 10 for light” slogan, a Facebook group and a “Missing for a Mission” campaign to fuel interest in the campus, they raised a whopping sum of five-lakh rupees. This was all done in-house without any external funding and it just goes to show what we can do if we put our minds to it.

The aim, then, was to make the units affordable to the tribals and so the units were priced at Rs. 500 each. A manufacturer offered to train some of the students in assembling the units and they in turn trained paraplegics with a local NGO to put the lamps together, thus providing them with an income-generating opportunity that they didn’t have earlier.

And so it happened that on March 12, 2010, 91 households in Ujjaini with over 500 people gave up kerosene lamps and made the move to solar lighting. The success is evident in the change in the village. The sole village shops stays open longer, the women do chores at night and use the hours saved to do other income-generating activities, and of course, students can now study beyond sunset.

That is not the end of the story. From that March day in 2010 until April 2011 (latest statistics), Project Chirag has lit up over 2109 houses in rural Maharashtra impacting 12000 people. According to their website, the project has saved 55,596 kgs of CO2 emissions, 27,000 litres of kerosene and over Rs.2,70,000 saved towards purchase of the kerosene.

It’s an incredible story and I hope this is just the beginning. It is time for India’s poor to move out of the darkness into the light of the new century.