Enabling Suaba with Light and Education

- Paromita Pain

Suaba, for the longest, had little access to electricity. The one school in the village had been dysfunctional for years and the single health centre is about 8 km away. There were no roads connecting it to nearby towns. In short, for the LangiaSaura tribals residing here—health, education, and electricity, the three basic necessities—simply did not exist.

It was such a situation that inspired 25-year-old Varun Sharma to bring the community together to ensure that Suaba at least got basic electricity and a functional school. Today, the village school functions with a permanent teacher after being non-functional for almost 5 years. A solar project to bring electricity to the village’s homes has been implemented and funds were raised to support it. “We aimed to provide lights in the kitchen and rooms where the children study,” says Varun. “Each house should have at least three lights.”

Questions about Development

A postgraduate student from the Azim Premji University in Bengaluru, Varun was a 2015 SBI Fellow when he decided to take a gap year to work with this remote tribal village. “After my engineering degree I chose not to work in a corporate,” he says. “I knew that this was something I did not really want to do.” He took a while to figure out that education was his calling and that sustainability in education and working with people was what he really wanted to be involved with.