They climbed onto rooftops to install solar panels — and in doing so, rewrote what rural women in Chhattisgarh could be. The Chief Minister's Office of Chhattisgarh announced on Wednesday, 29 July 2026 that women from self-help groups across the state are leading a rooftop solar movement under the DWEEPTI Yojana, earning the grassroots title of 'Solar Didi'.

Who the Solar Didis are — and what they are doing

'Solar Didi' is not a ceremonial label. These are women drawn from self-help groups (SHGs) — the community micro-enterprise collectives promoted under India's National Rural Livelihoods Mission since 2011 — who are being trained and deployed to install, operate, and maintain rooftop solar units in their own villages. The CMO's post describes them as 'illuminating homes while transforming lives,' promoting clean energy and building sustainable livelihoods across the state.

The DWEEPTI Yojana is the Chhattisgarh government's vehicle for this initiative. While the scheme's precise launch date, installation targets, and scale remain to be confirmed in official public records, the programme's design follows a well-established national playbook: combine rooftop solar access with local employment so that the energy transition pays a livelihood dividend at the village level.

A national grid, a state-level bet

Chhattisgarh's Solar Didi model sits inside a much larger national ambition. India is racing toward a target of 500 GW of non-fossil fuel capacity by 2030, a goal that traces back to the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission launched in 2010. Rooftop solar — cheaper to deploy than large utility plants and directly useful to households — is a critical piece of that puzzle.

Several Indian states have already integrated rooftop solar rollouts with women's SHGs to create what planners call 'last-mile' installation and maintenance capacity. The logic is tight: SHG women are already embedded in rural communities, trusted by neighbours, and organised for collective action. Train them, and you get both faster adoption and a new income stream for some of the country's most economically marginalised women. Chhattisgarh, a state with substantial tribal populations and a historically mining-heavy economy, is now staking a claim in that green-jobs story.

One programme worth watching in parallel is the central government's PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana, which offers subsidies for rooftop installations. Whether DWEEPTI Yojana is formally linked to that subsidy pipeline — and how installation numbers stack up — will be the real measure of scale.

From a grid connection to a green career

The deeper shift the CMO is signalling is economic, not just environmental. A rural woman who can diagnose a faulty solar inverter or wire a new panel is not dependent on a distant contractor — she is the contractor. That skill, once transferred, compounds: lower household electricity bills free up income, while the maintenance work itself generates fees. Clean energy and financial independence arrive together.

Chhattisgarh's Solar Didis are a small but vivid proof-of-concept for what India's energy transition can look like at ground level — not just megawatts on a dashboard, but women on rooftops, tools in hand, building something that lasts.