“Earlier, we used to have 14-hour workdays. We had to run the atta chakki (traditional flour mill) with the motor of our tractor, which we only used in the evenings after working in the fields. Now, with solar power, we finish in half the time. We save about Rs 25,000 a month because we no longer have to buy diesel. The EMI we pay is even less than that, and when it is done, we will have free electricity,” says 28-year-old Santosh Kumar, an atta chakki worker from Varanasi.

This change came through the efforts of Aayan Chopra, a 17-year-old schoolboy from Gurugram. While preparing for his Class 12 board exams at the Heritage Xperiential Learning School, Aayan is also leading a growing rural solar energy initiative aimed at improving the lives of small-scale workers across India.

“I have always been interested in renewable energy,” Aayan says, “but the real problems became clear when I was doing my fieldwork in villages during my internship in solar energy. The diesel generators were so noisy that when I asked a chakki worker a question, he couldn’t hear me. That’s when I realised this wasn’t just an energy problem—it was affecting health, education, the environment, and more.”

Born and raised in Gurugram, Aayan’s connection to rural life grew during his visits to Palampur, a village in Himachal Pradesh where his maternal family lives. There, he first noticed how difficult life could be for people in the agricultural sector. “When I saw farmers working so hard and still struggling to make ends meet, I kept wondering, can’t something be done to make this easier?” he tells The Better India.

The internship that sparked a movement

The opportunity came in 2022, when Aayan, then just 15, began interning with Metafin, a cleantech non-banking finance company (NBFC) that provides loans for solar panel installation to small businesses in semi-urban and rural areas.

Over three years, he learnt the ropes of solar energy, conducted field research, and began to understand the challenges faced by micro-entrepreneurs in India’s villages.

© The Better India