Thaindian News

New Delhi, Mar 10 (ANI/Business Wire India): With an intention to accelerate coverage in local and rural area’s and to mobilize, harness, and utilize the district and grassroot level resources, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) aims to activate support from the district Collectorates of selected states for its intensive mass campaign “Lighting a Billion Lives (LaBL)”, to provide basic solar lighting devices to the people in those areas.

The LaBL Campaign, formally inaugurated by the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, and partnered by the Clinton Global Initiative, is to bring light into the lives of a billion rural people in India over the next four years by displacing the kerosene and paraffin lanterns with solar lighting devices.

This would facilitate education of children, providing better illumination and kerosene smoke free indoor environment for women to do household chores, and provide opportunities for livelihoods both at the individual level and at village level.

Addressing the need for a state level convergent mass campaign, Dr RK Pachauri said, “This massive task cannot meet success without active support and handholding of governments, primarily the local self governments.

In a phased manner, in selected states of Chhatisgarh, Bihar, Orrisa, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan, TERI will organize a web conference of all district collectors to start a dialogue with them in spearheading the campaign in their districts.

It is expected the campaign will generate demand among the target people and the community at large for a safe and clean source of energy.

Through the District collectors, the campaign is expected to build a rapport and partnership between the stakeholders of the convergent departments for successful and timely implementation of solar lanterns and its use. (ANI)