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In India, Electricity is Powering Healthier Communities

Perspective
Published DateJuly 22, 2014

Last week, we shared stories of how smart solar power, provided by The Rockefeller Foundation’s Smart Power in India initiative, is jump-starting a new wave of entrepreneurial energy in Diyara Rasulpur, a cluster of villages on an island in the River Ganges.

In Bariar Chak, one of Diyara Rasulpur’s villages, Raja Ram, a first aid practitioner, is expanding a business idea with promising implications for public health. He works in a small wooden shack, a few hundred meters on the outskirts of the village, and keeps medicines stored in a wooden cabinet. He aspires to set up a medicine shop equipped with a refrigerator.

“I will be able to stock more vital medicines, like tetanus,” Raja says. “I will be able to treat chicken pox, whooping cough, and rabies immediately. Today, patients travel two-to-three hours across the river for these.“

This highlights one of Smart Power in India‘s most important aims: not only to provide light to individual households, but to also trigger a wave of inclusive economic development. The availability of better quality light is already triggering exciting transformations for new income generating activities with the power to lift the hopes of an entire community.

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