Over the last 12 months, the euphoria over India?s solar mission has been going up and down. Good or bad?the attention always seems to have been directed towards that part of the solar mission which is least relevant to the Indian context?the on-grid part.
On-grid mega solar does have its own issues?land, water and social. But all of that has been swept under the carpet as if solutions will fall from the sky and every story will have happy endings. As usual, in our democratic country, the big players rule and thus on-grid will get the attention?it doesn?t matter if we try to ape the solutions of the West even though the conditions and ecosystems are vastly different.
Anyhow, let?s focus on the least talked about part of the Indian Solar Mission?the off-grid part. What is the reality today: 500 million Indians do not have access to electricity and 200 million suffer from brownouts. Well, solar is not going to solve the problem of such magnitude but could provide reliable solutions to some parts of the segmentation. Other sustainable energies like small wind, micro-hydro, biomass gasifiers, etc, could together provide holistic solutions at the grassroots level?provided proper planning and implementation.
Some 10% of the total target of 20,000 MW has been allocated under the off-grid part?one that will target the underserved. I sincerely congratulate the Prime Minister on coming up with such an ambitious programme?a visionary idea. Sadly, this visionary idea has been ripped apart to pieces by policies that have been put in place to promote that very part!
The policies trample upon the poor?s choices by creating stifling conditions for implementation. The mission policy has followed a completely top-down approach while defining what is good for the poor. There has been lack of involvement of any stakeholder. Neither the end-users nor experienced practitioners have been consulted at length to create a concrete and sustainable policy that is pragmatic and pro-poor.
The policy throttles innovation by strictly defining the products, which are pathetically under-designed, thus leaving the poor to deal with failures. On top of it, the policy also sets the pricing regime, which is so unsustainable that it will only attract low-quality service providers?a perfect recipe for thousands of non-performing systems in the rural areas. Would any other sector like IT have allowed such dictatorial policies to be put into place? Here, these were allowed because the primary stakeholders are the poor and the small enterprises that cater to them.
The moment people talk about off-grid, people think of the poor and then think of subsidies. Well, that is where we are wrong.
Off-grid solar or any decentralised energy service model offers a wonderful opportunity for India to experiment with new business models, new financial products and services, new rural entrepreneurs, new technical innovations, etc. The solar mission was a perfect platform for India to combine poverty alleviation and diffusion of sustainable energy. The needs of the poor could have been addressed with different business models and value propositions?where the monies allocated under the mission could have been used to build a completely new ecosystem in the rural areas. The ecosystem, business models and service delivery mechanisms could have been easily exported to other developing countries, making India a truly soft superpower.
But the newly laid out solar mission policies show that our thought process is short-term. They also shows that policymakers are far away from reality. The off-grid part of solar is a reflection of how insensitive Delhi policymakers have become to the rest of the country. Instead of creating a ecosystem to encourage SMEs, they have put in place policies that will actually discourage the growth of much-needed after-sales service organisations in the rural areas. Instead of spurring innovation, the polices kill innovation by strictly defining the products that can be sold under the mission rules. The poor, as usual, have no choice. Their products and what they need to pay have been already defined. They would be just mute spectators in the solar mission?they only have to deal with what to do with non-functioning systems in two years!
For some of us who have spent decades in the field of rural solar, the off-grid solar mission is anti-poor and anti-democratic!
?The author is MD, SELCO-India, a player in the solar energy space