RAIPUR: In the quiet rural contours of Chhattisgarh’s Rajnandgaon district, a small village, Khaira, pulled off a noteworthy milestone. Every single one of its 141 households now gleams with rooftop solar panels, establishing Khaira as India’s first village to achieve 100% saturation under PM Surya Ghar: Muft Bijli Yojana, officials said.
Home to 889 residents, the village now boasts an aggregate clean energy capacity of nearly 282 kW, with a 2 kW setup mounted atop every home. Even more noteworthy is that the entire transformation cost the villagers nothing. While central and state subsidies covered the baseline, corporate social responsibility (CSR) funding bridged the remaining financial gap, ensuring zero out-of-pocket expenditure for the residents.
The gram panchayat gains a new identity. For decades, electricity meant an inescapable monthly expense competing against food, medicine, and household basics. Under the new net-metering framework, that dynamic has been completely flipped.
“Khaira’s families have transitioned from passive, grid-dependent consumers into self-reliant urjadatas—energy producers who feed their surplus power back into the utility grid. The shift represents not just lower utility meters, but an empowering psychological pivot where clean technology is no longer an urban luxury, but an integral part of everyday rural domestic life,” Jitendra Yadav, Rajnandgaon collector told this newspaper.
“Rooftop solar adoption in India has often skewed toward affluent, urban consumers capable of navigating complex bank loans and heavy paperwork. Khaira reversed this trend by putting vulnerable households first,” averred Bhupendra Yadav, Khaira sarpanch.
Out of the 141 electrified homes, 93 belong to beneficiaries of the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Gramin (PMAY-G), meaning their newly constructed pukka homes came equipped with renewable power right from day one. The village's 21 Scheduled Tribe families (88 individuals) and four Scheduled Caste families (18 individuals) share equally in this clean energy dividend, the collector added.
For elderly residents and single providers living on fixed incomes, the relief is apparently profound.
Shohgil Gond, a widow living alone on her pension, said, "I live alone and depend only on my pension. Now I don't have to worry about the electricity bill."
Kartik Yadav, a PMAY-G beneficiary managing domestic work and manual labor, echoes that relief, "My earnings are small. With solar, I won't have to worry about the electricity bill anymore."
Khaira’s solar leap was not won through top-down mandates, but through intimate community trust. The breakthrough was driven by local women mobilizers—known as PM Surya Sakhis—including local champion Sangeeta Sahu, working in tandem with the extensive self-help group network of Padma Shri awardee Phoolbasan Bai Yadav and village sarpanch Yadav.
By orchestrating seamless coordination among district administration, rural banking networks, grassroots women leaders, and CSR partners, Khaira has offered a practical roadmap for India’s decentralized energy ambitions.
It proves that when clean energy policy meets grassroots trust, the transition toward an Urja Aatmanirbhar (energy self-reliant) nation can start where it matters most—right from the village rooftop.
