Meeting electricity needs in rural areas

What had happened at Kansat in Chapainawabganj district about a decade ago occurred at Raipur of Laxmipur district, albeit on a somewhat lower scale, last Thursday: villagers there went on a rampage demanding electricity. While police firing accounted for more than a dozen lives at Kansat, angry mob set 5/6 vehicles on fire at Raipur and ransacked the office of the Rural Electrification Board (REB) there. Thousands of people were agitating for power at Raipur for three days. Attacks on REB offices by angry and desperate villagers every year are a common occurrence, particularly in hot and humid days. In the eyes of law, such violence is certainly a criminal act but villagers in areas like Raipur could not but give vent to their pent-up anger over continuing power outages there. In many rural areas, electricity lasts only for one to two hours a day. This, villagers think, is linked to a sharp rise in looting and dacoity as the criminals take full advantage of such a situation at night.    
On its part, the government is otherwise making its frantic efforts for more power generation in the country. Urban dwellers have been made to buy electricity at higher prices, consequent upon "operations" by quick rentals. But even then power generated through quick rentals is not enough to cover rural areas. It is now time for the government to look for other options like solar and renewable energy sources. It is heartening that solar energy is now being increasingly used in lighting rural homes. Fast growing solar home systems (SHS) with more than 50,000 new installations a month place the country in a comfortable position. With support from the multilateral development partners, about two million solar home systems have already been installed in the rural areas.
In recognition of solar energy success in Bangladesh, the World Bank (WB) has approved the second phase of SHS programme. This will support an installation programme of 550,000 solar homes systems in rural areas, renewable energy-based mini-grids, replacement of diesel irrigation pumps with solar pumps, introduction of clean cooking stoves and deployment of energy-efficient compact fluorescent lamps. The SHS has turned out to be an economically viable solution to meet power blackout in villages where electricity grids are too expensive to build.
The SHS meets the basic electricity needs of rural people who would otherwise have been dependent on kerosene lamps for lighting. Electricity obtained from the systems has helped children spend more time studying, and new opportunities are emerging for village enterprises. Rural markets can now remain open longer hours in the evening and conduct business. Extensive use of solar and other renewable energy is welcome because it is environmentally friendly and mostly risk-free. Lessons from use of solar systems in countries like China can be helpful for the country.