As a social enterprise committed to providing some of the poorest households in India with solar power, Mera Gao Power is making great inroads. Starting from Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh, the venture has reached out to more than 3500 customers in just over a year. In this lovely photo essay, Anna Da Costa observes some of the impact that can be seen when people living off the grid are finally included in the growth story and shown the possibilities.
The fading light begins to slope and redden as evening approaches in Sitapur district, north-central Uttar Pradesh. As you journey here from the bustling city of Lucknow, you travel not only across space but time, too, into a medieval world of smoking wood fires, trundling bullock carts and mud-walled, straw-topped huts. Scantily clad children herd buffalos in from pasture, riding atop them like tiny warriors. There is little electricity here, and access to clean water or basic sanitation is almost absent too. The summers are scorching and the winters frigid yet at this time of year, just after the rains, a cool breeze tousles the teeming grasses blissfully. Even this heavenly vision, though, veils the challenges that were brought to the region by heavy monsoon rains this season, which swelled the Ghaghara river’s banks to bursting point, inundating more than seventy villages in the area and multiple croplands.
UP is one of India’s largest, most populated states, within which 63 percent of households (125 million people) are without power. In many areas no grid exists at all, and in those where it does, power is sporadic. In Sitapur, one such pocket of absence, a small social enterprise called Mera Gao Power (MGP) is trying to change things, two solar panels at a time.
Village by village, they are building a network of low cost solar microgrids that provide two LED lights and a mobile charging point to all paying households at a cost of Rs. 25 per week. That’s lower than the equivalent kerosene and mobile charging costs from the nearest town, which can be almost double when totaled across the month¹. Being a “smokeless” source of light it comes with added benefits to customer health, too.
Installing a microgrid is a grand event in the village and everyone gets involved. Here in the village of Damdampurawa, the team maps the village house by house beneath the scorching mid-day sun, working out where to place each wire so as to connect customers to the power source. Some householders joined in while others looked on, smoking a chillum, calling out orders, or watching the curious proceedings wide-eyed.
Being an energy service company, MGP maintains responsibility for these grids after they are installed. The only price the customers pay is for the connection and the energy itself, which they are provided with for seven hours each night. “This is an essential part of our model”, says Sandeep Pandey, their operations manager. “It’s designed not to place high price burdens on our customers, who are amongst India’s poorest”.
Before any equipment is installed, it is vital that it is tested. Poor quality materials can flaw a grid from the start and have proved a problem for the company in the past. Here, Sandeep, Nikhil and Raj Kamal, three members of the MGP team, test the wires that they plan to lay in the village of Damdampurawa to make sure they are working well.
¹ Kerosene: around Rs. 80/month or more (2 subsidised liters and one not subsidized) and Rs. 60-100/month to charge phones.
The roof of a sturdy, brick walled home in each village is always chosen as the site for the panels and the battery. Azaz, one of the company’s first electricians to be recruited from the local district block of Reusa, installs the panels in a southerly direction to capture as much sunlight as possible. A pairing of two panels is usually enough to serve up to 50 households (the average size of a village in this area), but the typical uptake in any one place is closer to 25 – about half of the village.
Many hands make light work as the wires are laid from house to house, connecting each home to the battery one by one. More often than not, the community loves to chip in and work together to make this happen.
When a system is installed, each light can be seen as a small square LED, placed wherever the customers want it in their house. Saroj Kumari (left) and Kavita (right) stand next to one of their new lights, which has been placed on the outside wall to illuminate their front porch.
Once the systems are in place, all that remains is to wait for nightfall. The lights are designed to switch on at a time the villagers choose, which is normally just as night approaches. Here, in the village of Sewanpurawa, the time of 6.30pm had been chosen, and a crowd gathered in the settling dusk. A small boy showed me his watch. It was out by half an hour but glinted in the fading light as he held it on his spindly wrist proudly. All of a sudden, the village became alight with bright glimmers, in kitchens, bedrooms and porches, in front of small shops and beneath awnings. As if by magic.
“When lights turn on, the entire village including the kids become so happy, saying “Light aa gayi!” (the lights are on!)”, says Prem Kumar Rastogi, a farmer from the village of Dalpatpur. “Everyone gets busy with their work thanks to the good, bright light. We’re saving our environment with these lights, and there’s no pollution in our homes either”. The ability to regularly charge phones also allows villagers to be connected, share information and ideas, watch films and listen to music too.
According to Pandey, new businesses are starting to emerge amongst the customers too. “In one village, customers are using the light to make saris by night, in another entrepreneurs have started crude manufacturing of eye glasses, and one man now has a night business making plastic table cloths”, he says.
Here, Santosh Kumar, a farmer from the village of Baldipurawa, sat with his niece on their newly-lit porch. “It’s nice to have light while we cook and eat”, he told us. “Now we can actually see our food, and if there are insects or other things falling in it”.
Sushil Kumar and Sushila Devi, also from the village of Bidthauli, are now able to keep their shop open late into the evening. “These days, I can see my customers as they come and go”, said Sushil Kumar. “The children are studying more now, and we can charge our mobile phones in less time as we don’t have to visit the town to do so”.
Kushuma, from the village of Sewanpurawa uses her lights to cook into the evening. “We’ve had the lights for a month now, and get all kinds of benefits”, Kushuma told us, shyly. “We can cook beneath the light and see our food as we eat. I feel safer as well”.
Kushuma’s son, his eye swollen with an infection, looked up towards their newly installed lights as she cooked beside him.
Kallu Ram, a Doctor from the village of Bidthauli now uses his lights to keep his medical store open late into the night, so he need not rely on kerosene or diesel to provide power after dark.
In the village of Sewanpurawa, children use the lights to continue their studies after dark. Parents also feel a sense of relief, as there is less danger of the children coming to harm in the darkness.
For any company, be it “social” or otherwise, much of its long-term sustainability rests on its capacity to keep creating value for its customers. This might be through a continued expansion of its customer base, or through diversifying its array of offerings over time. MGP is seeking to do both, starting with expanding its customer base.
“It was always crucial for us that the model was sustainable across multiple levels: economic, environmental and social. Scale is a part of this”, says Nikhil Jaisinghani, one of MGP’s co-founders. “We are constantly keeping an eye on how to make sure that is the case…trying, testing, failing and evolving to suit the needs of our customers as best we can”.
In the future, says Brian Shaad, the other of MGP’s co-founders, they also hope to diversify the services they can offer MGP’s newly created network. “We hope this will include services such as education, awareness raising around sanitation and healthcare, entertainment, and improved access to knowledge and technologies for farming”.
“We believe that the model is slowly proving itself”, Jaisinghani noted, as we reflected on the company’s growth across its first year of operation. “At the moment we aren’t able to keep up with the demand, which I’d like to think is a good sign!”
Indeed, the results to date are encouraging. MGP began its installations in December 2011, when it installed its first microgrid in the village of Sewanpurawa. Since that time, operations have been expanding at an escalating rate. In March the company had reached 20 villages, by September, 56, and at the last count, 137: so about 3500 customers so far. This includes a recent move into a second district block within Sitapur, close to their starting point of Reusa. Their hope is to incorporate outreach into a third block within the next three months.
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