Watch: Thirty years on, Dharnai, a Bihar village, damns the darkness and embraces the sun

What if electricity, the energy that powers our smartphones, our homes, our offices and our lives, is taken away from us for a day. What if a day becomes a month and a month becomes a year. Dharnai, a little village in the rural swaths of Bihar, lived in the dark for 30 years before something changed their lives. Something that had always been there – the sun. Dharnai used to have a regular supply of electricity before the transformer burnt, well, just to remind you 30 years back. After three decades of living on kerosene lamps, Dharnai has adopted solar power and awoken to light. Not only that, it has also awoken to clean, sustainable, renewable energy. From a remote nondescript village in some corner, Dharnai could well now be chronicled as a role model for many a villages which are still plunged in darkness. [caption id=“attachment_2401162” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Screenshot from YouTube video[/caption] The people of Dharnai and actors Vinay Pathak and Sanjai Mishra tell the inspiring story of the little village in a video by Centre for Environment and Energy Development (CEED). Nagender Kumar, a village resident put up a solar panel at his home and felt that every one in the village must have it too. That’s where it all began. With the help of CEED, the entire village is now run on solar energy. It is now a ‘Solar Village’. After embracing solar energy the lives of people of Dhanai have been transformed. As Nagender himself puts it in the video,“When a person used to living in the dark is suddenly shown the light, imagine his unbridled joy.” Now Dharnai, with energy that will serve generations, has the power to do more. Dharnai is the first step, CEED’s aim is to create ’thousands of Dharnais’. The video promotes the use of renewable sources of energy and asks to participate in the ‘100% Renewable Energy Bihar’ campaign. With a call for #SolarBihar, the video encourages awareness on the the benefits of solar energy.   “How will the energy from the sun finish? Go on tell me,” quips a resident, Savitri Devi, with a smile on her face. After all, the state electricity board can abandon them, but the sun never will. Watch the inspiring story of Dharnai below and join in for 100% Bihar: