Villages got electricity due to students - Fusion - WeRIndia

Even though electricity has been in India for a long time, there are approximately 18,000 villages which still doesn’t have electricity. Instead of waiting for someone to do something, these students took it in their hands and helped two remote villages get electricity.

Ghatakunang and Khangaon are the two villages. They are in Uttara Kannada district of Karnataka. People here are completely dependent on sun to plan their activities. All the work there has to be done before the sun sets. Once the evening falls, all work stops and the villagers are forced to live in the vegetated area populated by wild animals.

Sunny Arokia Swamy and his friends Balachandra Hegde, Kumaraswamy and Kotresh Veerapur did not want to stand by and let it continue. They are engineering students who graduated from the MS Ramiah Institute of Technology in 2015 in the field of Electrical and Electronics.

They started by contacting a local NGO and along with their help they went to the Kali Tiger Reserve area in the Uttara Kananda district.

From there they surveyed eight villages. The people of these villages were facing a lot of trouble during monsoons because they are in the backwaters of the SUPA dam. As a result, many houses are often flooded.

They thought that the best help they could do is by doing something they have expertise in: electricity. The group wanted to use solar to light villages. They spoke to their Head of the Department, Dr. Pramila Manohar. She supported them with their mission.

At first, the college funded and implemented the project in five households. It slowly expanded to include two villages and 18 households. The four students created their stand-alone solar systems and thus began Project Belaku. They have successfully managed to bring light to two villages and they are not looking to stop expanding.

Image Reference: TheBetterIndia