New Delhi: Read this! In a country where we spend thousands of watts of electricity for a day and night cricket match, use the power-greedy heater to ward off the winter chill, there lies another India where villages are dimly lit by paraffin lamps and dim lights battling darkening chimneys. For this cash-strapped India an ignited filament powered by current is a rare luxury, for they cannot even afford electricity.
Interview with Harish Hande
When a crusader in the shape of H. Harish Hande appeared with plans of delivering solar electrification to pockets of rural Karnataka, the below poverty lines families realized their nights need not be tremulously lit forever. An Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur product and doctorate degree holder from University of Massachusetts with solar speciality, Hande is the managing director and co-founder of SELCO-India.
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Complete Interview
Winner of the Ashden Award for Sustainable Energy in 1995 and the Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2007, an annual honour that comes courtesy three organizations, namely Confederation of Indian Industry, United Nations Development Programme and the Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation, Hande says the poor actually pay more for power, giving example of the Delhi street vendors who pay as much as Rs20/- for an incandescent light every evening.
Solar power: A solar powered bulb at a Udupi market. Harish Hande’s Selco is committed towards rural solar electrification
The Social Entrepreneur of the Year is for those people who open new markets for the lower strata of society, innovate programmes, empower the people they serve, multiply resources and positively influence the government and other bodies to replicate their models.
Simantik Dowerah had an exclusive tete-a-tete with Harish Hande on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum. Edited excerpts:
What was the driving force behind setting up Selco Solar Lights?
It was more a matter of chance with the concept emerging out of my Ph.D on rural electrification. The next logical step was to set up Selco and to see how sustainable energy like solar can be diffused/ disbursed to rural areas in a way that allowed people to pay and maintain it. A sustainable venture, both in terms of social and commercial returns, it was set up in 1994-95 it rested on three tenets: poor people can afford sustainable technologies; poor can maintain sustainable technologies; and the poor can support the running of a commercial venture profitably.
I was deeply influenced by my experience in the Dominican Republic. Their poor were paying for solar, which was perceived to be powerful and expensive. This inspired me to take it up at my Masters and Ph.D level and Selco was only an outflow of that.
You have made solar electrification available to many BPL families in Karnataka, Kerala and Gujarat. How much time do you think it will take to penetrate the national/ urban space?