Visit to Selco - Dharwad

Selco, true to its philosophy, consciously occupies really down to earth premises as its offices; reason being…….the customers need to feel at home. This is the third branch I’ve visited and I’m amazed at how they’ve made that extra effort at each of these offices. Here’s the office in Dharwad.

Selco office is one portion of this house

During this trip, I got to visit a village, actually a hamlet of around 300 people, off the highway from Dharwad to Goa.

It’s beautiful and picturesque. It’s also hard and brutal.

The pictures caught the beauty; the hard and brutal is what’s behind the scene. 

The entry to the pretty hamlet

The solar light in the kitchen of Chandana

See the solar panel on top of the hut

This brought back fond memories of times spent with grandmothers..... long gone by

Another house with the solar panel on top

Such a charming and colourful house....the old man was too :)
Don't miss the airtel dish !

Spot the solar panel?

Prasanna Hegde, Selco Regional Manager for North Karnataka and Lokeshu,
Customer Service Exec for Dharwad, who accompanied me on this visit...
Thanks to both !

The village is just 20 kms from Dharwad, which is district headquarters, yet, it’s only last year that the village got connected to the grid, and even now they get but a few hours of electricity a day. Their only real source of light are still the Selco Solar Systems. Inside their huts it is so dark, that the eye takes a long while to adjust and I was there in the middle of the afternoon. It’s hard to imagine how dark that place must be at night, with no electricity as far as the eye can see. How they co-exist with snakes and scorpions and other animals is hard to understand. When I asked one of the villagers  how he felt after he got light in his house, he says......... we could now see what we were eating, otherwise we wouldnt  know what insects were in our food. And children being able to study, women being able to cook, men being able to sharpen their farm implements (instead of wasting daylight hours on such chores) are some of the other things he mentioned. One aspect that really stood out is how each and every house which had a solar system installed,(all of them are two light systems) had one of those lights in the kitchen. I was glad to see the subtle recognition of the importance of the kitchen, and more the recognition of the woman's need.

To give you an idea of how the system works and how it's sustainable: In this village, Selco installed 100 solar systems of two lights each, over a period of four months. This was done in 2010. The cost of each system was Rs.10,500, which was way out of reach of any of these farmers. So Selco tied up with a local Grameena Bank for the loans, stood security for all the loans by creating a fixed deposit with the bank. Yet, the 15%  down-payment  of Rs.1600 was also not possible for these farmers. So Selco organized the downpayment through REEEP, Renewable Energy & Efficiency Efficiency Partnership, which is an International NGO which works on energy efficiency programs in developing countries. The loans are being paid back per schedule.

And that's the story of how 100 homes went from darkness to light in this little hamlet of Chandragiri.