We began by reviving a shared identity across Agra, Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Ayodhya, Mathura, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, and Prayagraj, reframing these cities around their common historical, artistic, and cultural heritage rather than religion alone. This narrative was carried through cultural programming, a Hindi-Urdu poetry event, a "My Heritage, My Pride" museum show, sun-themed wall art, and marches, combined with solar ambassadors and weekly social content, gradually shifting public conversation toward clean energy as a point of shared civic pride.
Building on this, we mobilised three priority audiences to convert public sentiment into on-ground commitment: youth aged 18-25, faith leaders, and cultural department officials. A Youth Champions Fellowship and Solar Sabha built youth leadership around solar as a livelihood opportunity, faith leaders committed their places of worship to solarisation, and cultural and tourism officials committed institutional buildings. These commitments fed into a public petition demanding the inclusion of four additional cities in the state's solar cities programme.
With this public endorsement in hand, the campaign moved into direct engagement with MLAs, MPs, and City Mayors through a series of campaign activities, an inter-religious and inter-cultural parliament, delegation meetings, and a People's Manifesto on renewable energy ahead of the 2022 state elections. A Renewable Energy handbook was distributed to decision-makers, and the petition was formally delivered to press and government, converting public mandate into pressure for implementation against the state's 2022 RE target.
Throughout, progress was tracked against three testable hypotheses, that shared-identity narratives would shift public sentiment, that influencer-led content would drive audience engagement, and that political mobilisation would prompt an implementation roadmap. Each was measured through scale/continue/exit thresholds on reach, petition signatures, and decision-maker engagement, with the process closing in a campaign evaluation deck capturing sector-wide learnings.