The Solar Man

Imagine a day where you need to live without the luxury of electricity.  A day devoid of your laptop, mobile, TV , Fan , Lights,  Air conditioning, Refridgerator and basically every other electronic appliance. You’d probably go completely crazy and get a “Stone Age” feeling. An hour of power cut and one can go ballistic and basically create a ruckus with the Electricity board team

So when you get to hear about existence of villages in Rajasthan which has no absolutely electricity connections with no power lines reaching anywhere close to their towns, you know its quite disheartening as they have the same rights as every other person in this country. The government there failed to act on it and hasn’t really  tried to improve the infrastructure there. Nearly 75 households in the village of Naro Ka Kheda near  Udaipur in Rajasthan had no basic access to power.

This is where a young Indian student from Britain tried to take matters in his own hand and aimed to make an impact in these villages and came up with an ingenious solution. Last year , a Durham University Business school student by the name of Prabh Singh felt inspired by solar panels available online to power up small houses. Having learnt that its a common practice in European countries to build cabins and farmhouses powered by solar power only, he reasoned why the same cannot be implemented across villages in India as well.

He travelled to India and spent considerable time researching the conditions of villages in India and understood their problems. Through crowd funding and government agencies like North East Centre for Technology Application and Research, he raised considerable funds to install the solar panels in this village

He setup a small electronic device that consisted of a solar panel , three light bulbs , a tubelight and a mobile charging socket. This was the first time the villagers were witnessing the power of electricity and his model certainly created a huge impact in them

Alongside this , he setup a maintenance network that added to the revenue stream for the village for further developments if required. This was a revolutionary yet simple model which made a lot of difference to the people. The same model has now been pitched to the government to see if it can be replicated across other villages in several areas and harness its power 

Rather than aiming for a white collared job which will pay him several thousands of dollars every year, Prabh Singh instead focussed to make people’s lives better and bring about a change and impact through his innovations. What he has proved is that , it doesn’t require a major scientific discovery to bring about an impact. A simple idea that can provide an effective solution is more than sufficient to create a deep impact in people

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can  apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

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