Thanks to the Grameen Surya Bijli Foundation (GSBF), a Bombay-based nongovernmental organization, rural villiages all over India once immobilized by darkness can now see the light.

GSBF is installed solar-powered LEDs in these poor, rural villages so children can see to study and adults don’t have to do chores by the light of a cooking fire. Replacing kerosene as the primary lighting media, these LEDs can light an entire village with less energy than that used by a single conventional 100 watt light bulb.

As many as 1.5 billion people - nearly 80 million in India alone - light their houses using kerosene as the primary lighting media.

The fuel is dangerous, dirty, and, despite being subsidized, consumes nearly 4 percent of a typical rural Indian household’s budget. Compare that to the $55 one-time installation fee (covered by GSBF) of the solar LEDs, and its easy to see how little bits of low-cost technology could help the rural poor leapfrog into the 21st century. The Indian government hopes to bring electricity to 112,000 rural villages in the next decade.

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