Meet Meera Vashisht, the 13-year-old girl who is buying LED bulbs for India’s poor

Born to a Punjabi father and a Kashmiri mother, 13-year old Meera Vashisht was born and brought up in America and is a seventh grader at Sartartia Middle School.

It was while she was working on her science project last year did she hear about the Indian government’s move to substitute each of the 77 crore existing bulbs with power saving light-emitting diode (LED) ones.

The first question that immediately raced to her mind was, ‘Would it be really possible for India’s underprivileged to afford LED lamps that cost seven times more than bulbs?

Vashisht claims she started thinking about it quite hard and ultimately had a eureka moment. Not one to sit idly by, the 13-year-old decided to do her bit and ended up writing a letter summarising the Indian government’s objectives of reducing greenhouse gases and lighting up even the poorest villages in the country. She added in her letter how the major roadblock to this plan was the fact that the poorest sections of the society might be unable to afford these LED bulbs, even after the subsidised cost.

Vashisht sent out the letter to almost everyone her family knew with a plea for donations. Her intention was to use those donations to buy and distribute LED bulbs on her visit to India.

"Electricity is empowerment. In rural areas, it helps kids study after dusk, it helps ease the workload of people, it improves agricultural output," she explained in her letter to her potential donors.

And, as luck would have it, the little genius managed to collect $2,079, which is roughly Rs 1.4 lakh through her 500 letters. This meant that she could buy and distribute about 1600 LED bulbs when she visits India next month.

Supporting her initiative, her mother Sunanda, also wrote a letter to Piyush Goyal, Union Power Minister, expressing her daughter’s desire to be part of the government’s LED awareness programme.

The Indian government readily sent her a confirmation letter to be a part of the campaign, a programme for which will be organised sometime back in the first week of July, with the aim of spreading awareness about energy efficiency. The Union Power Ministry has also agreed to provide Vashisht with the logistical help needed to distribute the LED bulbs.

The Indian government plans to transform India into a fully LED lamp nation by March 2019 and has replaced as many as 12 crore bulbs with LED ones.

Image credit: Indiatimes