Kerala Just Became The First State To Provide Electricity To Every Single Household

In many aspects India is ahead of the curve when it comes to technology, but as far as rural advancement is concerned government efforts tend to be lacking. For so many families across the country, access to basic amenities is a daily struggle and until now no one has been paying attention. Kerala, however, has succeeded in making one such amenity accessible to almost every household in the state.

A village is said to have achieved total electrification if electricity reaches the village’s border and at least 10% of its households are electrified. However, the Left Democratic Front (LDF) of Kerala didn’t stop here when it came into power last year. It has recently been announced that the Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB) has been successful in providing electricity to 1.5 lakh households, out of which 1.32 lakh are below the poverty line, making Kerala the first Indian state to provide electricity to every household. This has been possible due to efforts by the State Government and the KSEB to ease issues regarding the legality of the holdings of many families in Kerala, that had been denied connections because of the lack of proof of ownership of their holdings.

The KSEB spent over Rs. 175 crore to make this total electrification possible. Apart from a 1,000 families in the most remote parts of the state, almost all houses in Kerala have now been electrified. In a ceremony in Kozhikode on 29th May, 2017, victorious CM Vijayan stated, “Efforts to bring electricity to my village did not yield any results for a long time...from that situation, now the State is being declared totally electrified. We have come a long way.”

The government’s focus will now shift on tapping solar energy, making Kerala’s objective of total electrification so much more efficient and meaningful. 4,70,000 families have been aided in their acquisition of total electricity as a result of the KSEB’s efforts, but the government is still striving to make sure that not a single household in Kerala is left in the dark.

Featured image courtesy The Economist