The light of their lives

Laatu is an agricultural labourer who lives in the village of Mangraulli which is part of the VIP Lok Sabha constituency of Amethi. Laatu and his family use a kerosene lamp for lighting their hut. Though there is an electricity pole in the village (signifying that on the records the village is electrified), getting a connection is difficult for him. It involves a lot of paperwork for the illiterate Laatu in an office located in the block headquarters in Jagdishpur. Going there involves loss of a day?s earnings! And at the end of it all, electricity supply is erratic with lot of fluctuations in the supply voltage. This year in March, Laatu?s son appeared in high school examinations ? the first person from the family to do so. It led Laatu to make a major investment of his lifetime ? he bought a solar lantern. This little device looks very much like a conventional kerosene lantern, but is powered by a battery which in turn is charged by solar energy through photovoltaic panels. Laatu had been planning to buy a solar lantern for quite some time, but the cost of Rs 4,300 was too high. Even after the subsidy provided by the ministry of non-conventional energy sources through the UP Non-conventional Energy Development Agency, the lantern was too expensive for him. So he dithered for a while before he finally made the plunge when, under a project implemented by TERI, a further subsidy was provided by the Bharat Petroleum Corporation and the price finally brought down to Rs 2,700. The lantern was now more within his reach. Laatu is visibly upbeat these days. Part of it is because his socialprestige is now higher than it ever was. But critically, he has never experienced such high-quality lighting earlier. As his son remarked, `the kerosene lamp only chases away shadows. This solar lantern lights up the whole room.? The sentiment was echoed by an Indian Administrative Service officer, who had studied in a rural hut under kerosene light, which was poor, detrimental to eyes while reading. Apart, of course, from being pretty much unusable during windy weather. The other great benefit to Laatu and his family are the savings in the recurring expenditure for kerosene. Based on his three months of experience, he thinks that his annual usage would decrease from 120 litres to less than 20 litres. It also translates into large savings for the national exchequer. Currently, a subsidy of Rs 5.15 per litre is provided to kerosene marketed through the public distribution system. It does not take long to figure out that even if half of the 7 crore households similar to that of Laatu, started using solar lanterns, a national savings of over Rs 2,000 crore every year could be achieved through reduced kerosene subsidies. These savings over a five-year period would provide adequate funds to subsidise the cost of each of these 3.5 crore lanterns by Rs 3,000 ? the amount needed before Laatu could buy his own solar lantern. In just one five-year plan period, it is possible to light up the homes of half of the poorest citizens of India through redirecting the kerosene subsidy. Obviously, the programme would need to ensure that appropriate servicing facilities are also set up in the villages where the solar lanterns are purchased so that spares like batteries and lamps, and minor maintenance, could be carried out there itself. This suggests that the programme should proceed from one village cluster to another, saturating each area before moving to another region. In the process, the entrepreneurial skills of the local residents can be tapped fully by involving them in the sales and servicing. The employment generation benefits would be enormous. Moreover, the quality of life in the poorest villages in the country would improve in a manner that is difficult to describe except by people like Laatu and his son.