The Hindu : Front Page : They excel in making solar lamps

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Nov 05, 2005

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They excel in making solar lamps

T. Lalith Singh

Erstwhile housemaids make it big

ENGINEERING ENERGY: Women Barefoot Solar Engineers on assembly line. Photo: D. Gopalakrishnan

HYDERABAD: Chennamma is not breaking stones any more. She gave up the hard labour that earned her a pittance. These days, she is busy working with circuit boards, wires and other complicated equipment.

It's true grit and support from National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) that helped Chennamma chart a new course for herself and others like her. The 45-year-old, who once stood in queues to collect weekly wages in a stone quarry, now heads the Women Barefoot Solar Engineers Association (WBSEA).

She teamed with three other illiterate housemaids to undergo training in assembling solar lamps at Bunker Roy's Social Work and Research Centre at Tilonia, Rajasthan. Apart from executing solar lighting projects, they are presently training four tribal women from Visakhapatnam at NIRD's Rural Technology Park.

`Respectable work'

Says Chennamma: "I used to earn Rs. 1,500 monthly from breaking stones. Now I am comfortably making three times more and that too with decent effort." "Though there are no degrees to boast of, they are engineers in every sense," says Lalith Mathur, NIRD Director-General.

The women are now maintaining NIRD's Solar Energy Power House and have completed work on lighting up a part of the campus to be inaugurated by Chief Minister Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy shortly.

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