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Patna, (Bihar Times): 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 selected states are Chhatisgarh,
Bihar, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan.
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Addressing the need for a state level convergent mass
campaign Dr R K Pachauri said in Delhi: “This massive
task can not meet success without active support and
handholding of governments, primarily the local self
governments. Governments have strong network of
presence and credibility among communities. The local
self governments, the district collectorates and the
local leaders can play a very constructive role in
spreading the campaign, which is to bring light.
The LaBL Campaign, formally inaugurated by the
honourable Prime Minister of India, 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.
TERI will organize a web conference of all district
collectors of these five states 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/commissioners, 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.
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