‘We are hiding behind the poor when we say we are a poor country and we need coal and nuclear energy’ via indian express.com

Amitabh Sinha Posted: Sun Aug 21 2011, 00:41 hrs

Harish Hande, who was one of the Magsaysay awardees this year, co-founded SELCO that has been working to provide solar lighting in rural areas of Karnataka. In this Idea Exchange moderated by Special Correspondent Amitabh Sinha, Hande speaks about the potential of solar energy.

 

Amitabh Sinha: Harish Hande is working to provide energy solutions, mainly to the underprivileged. He has been in this business for about 18 years but unfortunately, we got to know of him only after he won the Magsaysay Award. Tell us about your work.

 

Harish Hande: What we do is very simple: we provide sustainable energy solutions, basically solar power, to rural villages, individual households, street vendors, schools. Most of our work is in Karnataka but a few years ago, we started work in Gujarat too. Our primary focus is the individual household. We started with a concept to destroy three myths: that the poor cannot afford technologies, the poor cannot maintain technologies and thirdly, that you can’t start a commercial venture while trying to meet social objectives.\

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