Yahoo – AFP, Bhuvan Bagga, May 16, 2016
Government figures show that more than 300 million people in India still have no access to electricity (AFP Photo/Money Sharma) |
Anandpur
(India) (AFP) - Ram Kishore searched long and hard to find a suitable wife for
his son, but his efforts only paid off when electricity finally came to his
village in rural north India this year.
It was not
until the power pylons were installed as part of a government scheme to connect
thousands of villages to the national grid that Kishore could persuade a
prospective bride's parents to part with their daughter.
Prime
Minister Narendra Modi took
power after winning elections in May 2014
promising to make India "open for
business" (AFP Photo)
|
Now he is
all smiles as he sits under a glowing light bulb in his single-room home in
Anandpur village. Just 145 miles (230 kilometres) from the capital New Delhi,
it has never had electricity -- until now.
"I
will personally invite my daughter-in-law's family to visit us and look at the
electricity meter," the 60-year-old former labourer told AFP proudly after
his house was connected.
Anandpur is
just one beneficiary of an ambitious plan Prime Minister Narendra Modi
announced in his Independence Day speech last August to bring electricity to
18,452 Indian villages.
Government
figures released last year showed that more than 300 million people in India --
the world's fastest-growing major economy -- still had no access to
electricity.
Per-capital
electricity consumption is barely one third of the global average.
Speaking
from the ramparts of the Red Fort in Delhi, Modi said those villagers had been
"deprived of the rays of development," promising to finish the job
within 1,000 days and saying the country was "not ready to wait for 10
years".
It has not
been an easy task.
Dinesh
Arora, who runs the scheme for the power ministry, says the communities
targeted are the "the toughest villages in most extreme corners of the
country".
Indian
villager Ram Kishore sits beneath a newly installed electricity meter at his
home in the village of Anandpur in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (AFP
Photo/
Money Sharma)
|
Many cannot
be reached by road or are in areas riven by violence.
Two of
Arora's engineers were kidnapped and roughed up by Maoist guerrillas, while
another team had to swim across a river to reach their destination.
Even once
they reached the villages, some were given a hostile reception by residents
suspicious of local governments that had given them little help in the past.
India's
federal structure has added to the challenges, with electricity provision
usually handled at the state level.
Each state
has its own, often loss-making power providers, which are not always eager to
extend provision to the poorest villages where revenues are unlikely to justify
the cost.
Nonetheless,
since Modi launched the scheme, over 7,700 villages have been connected to the
grid.
'Everything
will change'
As the main
power line to Anandpur is switched on, the local men who had gathered excitedly
round the visiting officials to watch the run screaming towards their mostly
mud and brick houses yelling, "did it come?".
Anandpur
village is just one beneficiary of an ambitious plan Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi announced to bring electricity to 18,452 Indian villages (AFP
Photo/Money Sharma)
|
"My
husband has promised that we will now buy a fan and sleep peacefully at night,
without mosquitoes," said Urmila Devi, who lived in a village with
electricity before she married and has had to get used to kerosene lamps in
Anandpur.
Each of the
village's 120 residents has a different take -- some women are looking forward
to being able to cook indoors even after dark, which has been impossible
without electric lighting.
For young
men like farm labourer Neeraj Singh, electricity means have a mobile phone that
works.
"Having
to use a solar cell to charge was time consuming and my phone battery would
stay flat for days every month," he says.
For the
children of the village, most of whom children cannot read or write and have
never been to school, electricity means being able to carry on playing even
after sunset.
"I had
once watched television at my aunt's place and really enjoyed it," said
Lakshmi.
"Now,
I will ask my father to get us one."
Only 18 of
the 25 households in Anandpur agreed to get connected and have the free
electricity metre installed -- the other seven were unsure they could afford
the monthly bill of between $1 and $2.
But
55-year-old Devi is certain that the arrival of electricity is a boon for her
village.
"Everything
will change now," she said.
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