Meet 'Solar Gandhi', An IIT Prof Spreading Awareness On Climate Change And Solar Energy
Chetan Singh Solanki a Professor at IIT Bombay has been on the road for the past two years travelling across India on a bus for what he calls the Energy Swaraj Yatra 2020-30 Not going home for 10 years often referred to as Solar man of India and Solar Gandhi. First leg of the journey touching all states and union territories will conclude in November nearly two years after he set out from Bhopal.
"If Mahatma Gandhi was alive today, what would have he done to educate Indians about the climate crisis?" asks Chetan Singh Solanki, a Professor at IIT Bombay. He believes that the father of the nation would have taken out a march across the country to create awareness.
"That is what I am also trying to do - travel across India, tell people about climate change and encourage the use of solar energy," he says.
Solanki, a professor at the Department of Energy Science and Engineering, IIT Bombay has been on the road for the past two years, travelling across India, on a bus for what he calls the Energy Swaraj Yatra 2020-30.
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Not going home for 10 years
Often referred to as 'Solar man of India' and 'Solar Gandhi', Prof. Solanki has left academics and his family behind for 10 years to create awareness about climate change and solar energy.
"One or two years are not sufficient to create awareness about the urgent need for action to stop climate change, it will need at least a decade. So I decided to travel continuously for ten years, till 2030, across India. I made a promise to myself that I won't go back home to meet my family even on festivals," Solanki told Indiatimes.
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Office, house and more on solar-powered bus
In a bus, that has been modified to become his house and office, Solanki then set out on his Energy Swaraj yatra.
The modified bus has an AC bedroom, office space, a kitchen with an induction cooker and refrigerator, and a training room, all powered by eight solar panels installed on the mobile house's roof.
A volunteer from the Energy Swaraj Foundation, the bus driver, and his assistant are also traveling on the bus with Solanki.
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Fist leg to be completed in November
"The idea behind the bus was that I should have a place where I can comfortably eat, sleep and live. I designed the bus myself so that I will be comfortable throughout the journey," he said.
The first leg of the journey, touching all states and union territories will conclude in November, nearly two years after he set out from Bhopal in November 2020.
Energy Swaraj Foundation
In every new city and state Solanki visits, he makes it a point to display the bus his Energy Swaraj bus at prominent locations for people to see for themselves that solar power is reliable and can be used to power their houses.
From a MP village to solar man of India
Hailing from Barwani District in Madhya Pradesh, Solakni did his master's from IIT-Bombay and worked in chip designing for Texas Instruments in Bengaluru before realising that working on solar energy is what he wanted to do.
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Using science for the society
After completing his Ph.D. in solar from Europe and returned to India in 2004 and started teaching at IIT Bombay, but soon he ralised that it was not the set of people whose lives he wanted to change.
"In 2010, I started a school in rural MP to provide quality education for the children there. The school was entirely powered by solar. This was also the time when the government was trying to promote solar energy by offering subsidies. I thought instead of providing subsidies, why not train some rural people in making solar devices? So I took an unpaid leave of six months and went to the villages and taught them in putting together solar lanterns. In the six months they produced around 21,000 solar lanterns," Solanki said.
After tasting initial success Solanki set an ambitious target of providing one million solar lanterns to students within a year, which he ended up doing in 11 months.
Bobins Abraham/ Indiatimes
Since he started travelling, Solanki has given more than 600 talks about climate change and solar energy to a wide range of populations from students to techies and people who come to him seeing the bus on the road.
Stop subsidising solar
Interestingly, he feels that if the government wants to promote solar energy, it should stop providing subsidies for it.
"Solar power has been around for the past 50 years. All the subsidies are actually holding it back. Because, people feel guilty of using solar energy and not getting subsidy for it," he said.
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Bobins Abraham is the Assistant News Editor at Indiatimes. He has more than twelve years of experience in TV and digital journalism. An avid student of history and geopolitics, he is a conservationist and environmentalist at heart. He writes on environment, sustainability, human-animal conflict and more.
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