Picture a hot afternoon in Shelakewadi, a small village 14 km from Kolhapur. The kind of afternoon where all you want is a fan that stays on. In Shelakewadi, it does, reliably, without cutting out mid-afternoon, and the reason is something most villages in India are still working towards.

Shelakewadi decided to make its own electricity, and that decision, made roof by roof, family by family, is part of a much bigger story today.

It started with a knock on the door

Nobody handed Shelakewadi its solar future. The gram panchayat had to go out and ask for it.

Members walked door to door, talking to families about putting solar panels on their rooftops. The first reaction was hesitation, and understandably so. A typical household solar system costs between Rs 50,000 and Rs 1.5 lakh, even after government subsidies, and that is a significant financial decision for a village family.

So people started pooling what they could. Rs 5,000 here, Rs 10,000 there, with government schemes covering the rest. One roof after another got its panels, and the village started to change in ways that showed up in everyday life.

Today, Shelakewadi runs almost entirely on solar. Electricity bills that used to cross Rs 2,000 a month are now closer to Rs 100. Some households even earn a little by sending surplus power back to the grid through net metering, and a typical rooftop system pays for itself within four to six years, after which the savings compound year after year.

Mansing Shivaji Shelke (47), a farmer who cultivates sugarcane and groundnuts on his three-and-a-half-acre plot. “We used to spend over Rs 2,000 a month on electricity bills, mostly for irrigation. Now, the bill is just Rs 130, and sometimes, we even earn credits because our solar setup is connected to the grid.”

Electricity in Shelakewadi is made here, by the people who live here, and that changes how the whole village relates to power.

Beyond one success story

Across India, this pattern repeats in different states, at different scales, and through different approaches.

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