Agricultural Solarisation in Maharashtra : An Overview of the Policy Landscape

Maharashtra is an agrarian state with 48.03 Lakhs grid connected agricultural pump set connection. Tariffs for agricultural pump sets have traditionally been maintained at artificially low levels through cross-subsidies and direct government subsidy support. However, with the continued rise in the Average Cost of Supply (ACoS), the tariff differential between agricultural consumers and other categories is becoming increasingly skewed. The escalating subsidy requirement is placing significant strain on the State exchequer. Anticipating large scale implication, Government of Maharashtra in 2015 initially rolled out off-gid solar pump scheme followed by notification of first feeder level solarisation scheme in 2017. A similar model is subsequently promulgated under the KUSUM Scheme in 2019. Solar options are preferred due to low gestation period, attractive pricing and availability during daytime. Hence, solarisation of agricultural sector is the major thrust area at Centre and State level. As these schemes are subsidy driven, it becomes imperative to evaluate the policies for their efficacy and understand the ground realities. This paper attempts to understand the approach followed by Maharashtra on policy and regulatory level, while promoting off-grid pump and feeder level solarisation. At last, this paper provides contours for possible policy course corrections for efficient subsidy targeting.