In August 2014, in a countrywide address delivered just months after being elected to his first term as prime minister of India, Narendra Modi promised to provide electricity to all the nation’s villages within 1,000 days. “The country can’t wait any longer,” he stated. At the start of that year, still 15 percent of Indian towns and villages did not have any access to a power grid.
Less than four years later, Modi declared that the goal had been met, reporting that that every single village of India now had access to electricity. “The lives of many would be transformed forever,” he said.
It was an impressive achievement indeed, but it still did not mean that every Indian was able to plug into an electric socket – for a village was formally considered electrified if only 10 percent of the households in it were hooked up to the grid.
But a diamond company & WDC Members, Shree Ramkrishna Exports (SRK) in a making a difference, decided to take a more absolutist approach. It started its project in Dudhala, a small village in the Amreli district of Gujarat, where its chairman and founder had grown up.
Creating a smart village: Govind Dholakia, fondly known as Govindkaka, was born into a farming family before moving to Surat in 1964. There, at age 13, he began his career as a diamond bruter. In 1970 he set up his own diamond crafting company with two partners, Bhagwanbhai Patel and Virjibhai Godhani. It would evolve into the SRK Group, one of India’s leading natural diamond suppliers, and an enterprise that today employs more than 6,000 people.
But he remained emotionally connected to Dudhala, often recalling the fun he would have with his friends, as they walked to and from school in the nearby village of Lathi.
In March 2022, Govindkaka decided to journey to Dudhala to spend quality time with his fellow villagers. He wanted to thank them for the selfless love they had shown him, in what he insisted would be a non-transactional way. His entire family joined him in organizing an event that became called, Vatan nu Vhal, meaning; Love for the Homeland, or Tribute to the Homeland.
It was then, in the company of hundreds of local residents, Govindkaka declared his intention to transform Dudhala into a smart village, which would be powered by green energy and be digitally connected. The solarization of the village began shortly afterwards, and involved the installation of solar panels on the roof of each of Dudhala’s 350 houses. The project was completed in just four months.
In August 2022 residents of Dudhala stopped paying electricity bills, and they would not need to do so for the next 25 years. And because the solar power was renewable, nature benefitted at the same time.
The company originally had planned to end the project after Dudhala was fully solarized, but the following year it instead decided to expand it, as part of the celebration of India’s 75 years of Independence.
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