Imphal: Atom Khuman, a small village of Imphal West, is set to become Manipur’s first solar village and also perhaps the first in the Northeast with an NGO working on rural electrification programme, providing solar energy equipment free of cost.
The process of installing the equipment at all the village households will begin tomorrow during a wedding ceremony.
Mangaal Rural, the NGO, took up the challenge to install the equipment at all the households in the village, besides placing five lighting systems along the village road before sunset tomorrow.
“We will celebrate during the wedding tomorrow,” Atom Khuman Youth Club secretary Irengbam Mocha said.
The village, 20km from Imphal city, has 30 households with a population of a little over 150. Farming is the main occupation of the villagers here. “We don’t have regular power supply. The supply is erratic and it comes for two to three hours a day,” a villager, Konthoujam Ojit, said.
Mangaal Rural’s founder Surjit Ningthoujam handed over the equipment to the villagers at a function at the village playground today. The villagers hired a generator to run the public address system during the function.
Besides the equipment, the NGO has given a television set to the local club free of cost. The NGO spent Rs 5 lakh to turn Atom Khuman into a solar village.
“I started working on lighting up rural Manipur considering the dismal power supply situation of the state. When I was a child there was hardly any power supply in rural areas. Little has changed over the years. Everyone thought the situation will never improve in Manipur. I want to show that this chronic problem can be solved. Our fight is against energy poverty,” Ningthoujam said.
The NGO has lit up 5,000 rural homes in Manipur with solar power since it started working in 2011, The Telegraph reported.
“We are giving the equipment on loan. A beneficiary can repay it at the rate of Rs 18 per day. An installation can light up maximum four rooms in most rural homes. We are giving the equipment for free today to Atom Khuman to show that solar energy can also light homes. The villagers are not aware of this,” he added.
The system can also charge cellphones. The villagers were so happy today that they stopped their daily activities to participate in the function. The NGO received several requests from other villages to provide power supply to them. The NGO has a target of lighting 100 villages by December.