What started as a small dream to reach out to villages with no electricity has metamorphosed into a multi-country project for an IIT-Bombay professor. Chetan Singh Solanki can very well be called a crusader of solar power. With the mission of placing a million solar ambassadors across the continents in a year, Solanki this week set out from Sabarmati Ashram on a six-month Solar Yatra to cover 30-40 countries. The idea is to create environmental awareness and help people become self-reliant in energy production.
“My yatra is based on the concept of Gram Swaraj promoted by Gandhiji. I am trying to get a million children across countries to take the pledge of non-violence to the environment,” says Solanki.
Hailing from the small district of Khargone in Madhya Pradesh, where he went to a single-classroom primary school, Solanki has come a long way. “There is still no bus connection to my village. People walk about 2km to reach the nearest bus stand. I grew up there, managed to come to IIT-Bombay and even went to Europe for higher studies,” he says.
He always wanted to give back to society and decided to get into solar energy production. “The way we are exploiting the environment right now, the severity of climate change will be felt by children who are 10 or 11 years old today. We have to reach out to these young people to create awareness,” he says.
His first two projects in 2007 and 2010, to distribute solar lamps, were complete failures. “One lamp was given to each of 500 villages. But once the lamps started having glitches, no one knew how to fix them. In our next project, we decided to have a solid contract with manufacturers for maintenance. It failed again. There was no accountability whatsoever,” Solanki says. It was then that he decided to reach out to local communities as “assembling a solar lamp is not rocket science”. “With a little help from the government, society and my students at IIT, we managed to make a million lamps,” he says with glee.
Given his scientific worldview, not surprisingly, and much against his family’s wishes, Solanki got married in a mass marriage function. This, despite his Rajput lineage. Can celebs learn a thing or two from this humble brainman?
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