Jamshedpur, Oct. 13: It’s a Puja gift which they will cherish forever. Three villages of East Singhbhum were able to celebrate the annual homecoming of goddess Durga lit up in style by solar lamps.

Under the aegis of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), all households of Chadoha and Chapri, about 22km from Ghatshila, and Mahtadera, 25km from here, received solar lights which they used after sunset much to everyone’s delight in early October.

Titled “Light a Billion Lives”, the TERI campaign was launched by its director-general R.K. Pachauri at the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual meeting in New York last year — as the chair of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Pachauri received the Nobel Peace Prize last year along with former US vice-president Al Gore.

Light a Billion Lives aims to introduce the benefits of solar lights to, yes, a billion rural people, and convince them to do away with the practice of burning kerosene and paraffin for lighting.

Jharkhand is the third state after Uttar Pradesh and Bihar where the campaign, which also aims to encourage rural entrepreneurship, has been implemented. There are more villages in the pipeline: Kashida, Lapai and Sardabera, all in East Singhbhum.

“We have done extensive research to select the villages each of which got 50 solar lighting devices for residents to use after sunset,” said Sumant Dubey, the associate fellow in decentralised energy solutions, TERI.

Each village has an “entrepreneur”, who has been trained by TERI in troubleshooting, and it is at his home that charging stations for the lamps are set up. He maintains a daily record — endorsed by thumb impressions — of the number of villagers using the lamp.

The charge per solar lamp is Rs 2 per night which works out to much less than the cost of burning kerosene. About one third of the income goes to the NGOs involved with the project for long-term maintenance of the devices.

TERI has involved Sri Sri Rural Development Trust, a wing of the Art of Living Foundation, Bangalore, to look after the villages near Ghatshila, while Socio Economic and Education Development Society (SEEDS) has been assigned Mahtadera.

“When we visited the village recently, the women were the most satisfied. They are the ones who found it difficult to do household work after sunset. Children are also happy as they can now study well into the night without having to worry about light,” said Shubhra Dwivedy, the chief executive of SEEDS.

The lamps have already become popular and have found their way to the local haat where the users are charged a marginally higher Rs 5 per night.