In Tripura, a village moves from darkness to solar-powered light

Life has changed in Sarkhipara after a micro-grid solar plant was installed a year ago. Rahul Karmakar talks to villagers in the hamlet in Tripura’s Khowai district to chronicle how electricity finally came, and how it has affected their prospects and their daily rhythm

While others screamed with joy when the sun, condensed into eight-watt LED bulbs strung at irregular intervals from one end of Sarkhipara to the other, shone past dusk on September 10, 2021, Lebirung Reang just smiled. She recalled what Natuharia Reang had said before they got married six years ago — that he could bring the moon and the stars home for her. He had probably meant the sun, the nearest star, she thought.

There was another reason why Lebirung was less exuberant than the 85 other inhabitants of Sarkhipara, which means ‘hilltop hamlet’ in the local dialect. She was the only one who had had the experience of living with electricity at Ompi-Salkhapara, her native village, about 50 km west of Sarkhipara.

Natuharia, a school dropout like his wife and a jhum cultivator, fell for Lebirung after spotting her at her village’s periodic market in 2016. It wasn’t easy for him to change two public vehicles to meet her at Ompi-Salkhapara regularly. He did the next best thing: travel frequently to Chakmaghat 30 km away to charge his mobile battery for ₹10 until it was full, to be able to speak to Lebirung. He did not tell Lebirung that Sarkhipara went to sleep after sunset or used kerosene lamps for emergencies at night. Neither did she ask him if his village had electricity; she just presumed it did.

“Felt like the home I was born in,” Lebirung says, recounting the day the control room of the 2 kWp (kilowatt peak power output) micro-grid solar power plant at Sarkhipara was switched on.

For Natuharia, September 10 wasn’t just the day that power reached his home in the village; it was the day his wife stopped teasing him for bringing her from light to darkness.

Sarkhipara, in Tripura’s Khowai district, is about 90 km east of Agartala. Its residents are all Reangs, one of the 19 Scheduled Tribes in the State but the only one recognised as a PTG (primitive tribal group) although the nomenclature today is ‘particularly vulnerable tribal group’. According to a 2016 survey by the Tribal Welfare (Tribal Rehabilitation Programme and Primitive Tribal Group) Department, commonly known as TW (TRP and PTG), the population of Reangs in Tripura is 1,85,308. The department was formed in 1985-86 for the rehabilitation of PTGs through the Forest Department in three tribal divisions.

Sarkhipara might probably have been off the State government’s radar had Dilajoy Reang, the most educated among its residents, not written to Jeebonjoy Reang, the district-level chairman of the TW (TRP and PTG) Department, to bail his village out of darkness. His application in 2019 was transferred to the Tripura Renewable Energy Development Agency (TREDA), the State nodal agency for implementing new and renewable energy projects in Tripura.