Solarizing India’s Agriculture

Description:

About 60 per cent of India’s population relies on agriculture for livelihood. A reliable and efficient irrigation system has always been a key demand from the sector. Despite interventions facilitating access to water pumps, challenges have persisted. Erratic power supply and rising diesel costs burden farmers; subsidising electricity for irrigation strains state finances; and widespread use of diesel pumps has an environmental cost, with one diesel water pump emitting 5.2 million tonne of carbon annually (source of this data?).

States like Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra have successfully introduced ‘solarisation’ of irrigation through state-level schemes. At the Central level, the Government of India launched the PM-KUSUM (Pradhan Mantri Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan) scheme in 2019 with the objectives of increasing farmers’ income, providing new sources for irrigation, and ‘de-dieselising’ agriculture.

However, the scheme has only achieved 30 per cent of its target so far. Understanding the policy and implementation gaps is now imperative to achieve the remaining 70 per cent target by March 2026, the scheme’s deadline.

Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has published a new analysis on irrigation solarization in India’s top-performing and under-performing states, seen through the lens of the PM-KUSUM scheme. We invite you to an online release of the report, followed by a panel discussion on the subject.