Shabnam, formerly a teacher, is our Community Correspondent from Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. Being denied a much-deserved scholarship for completing matriculation with first division just because she came from a Muslim family did not stop Shabnam from pursuing higher education. Now the first graduate in her family, Shabnam believes that she has fulfilled her father’s dreams. Threatened by her progressive educational background,…

Shabnam Begum

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In this week's Awaz Ho Buland weekly show, our Community Correspondent Shabnam Begum from Varanasi highlights the lack of electrification in rural areas of India. While a village in Jharkhand's Chhatra district has not received electricity for three years now, after strong winds brought down the village's electric poles, oil leakage from a transformer in Bihar's Pachkesar village led it to burning out and eventually no power supply in this village. Multiple complaints to the local electricity department went unheard, locals say.

Under the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gram Jyoti Yojana, rural electrification in villages of West Bengal was carried out. But due to malfunction in the systems, some villagers are receiving inflated bills to the tune of Rs. 14,000.

In Madhya Pradesh's Betul district, our Community Correspondent (CC) Mohanlal Shilu reports of the problems faced by people as a result of lack of power. The residents have to cook, eat and sleep in the dark. Students study under candlelight. People are forced to travel to neighbouring villages to charge their mobiles.

In Mumbai, CC Yashodhara Salve reports about daily wagers living in Malad on the periphery of a protected forest. Since their houses comes under forested area, legally they can't have authorised electricity connections. Hence, they get it from other vendors where every unit of electricity is expensive. During lockdown, these daily wage families resorted to not using any electricity during the day time and using it only during night time to sleep.

Watch these and many other stories related to India's rural electrification program in this week's Awaz Ho Buland.

See all previous episodes of Awaz Ho Buland here.