Sanjeev Kumar Patro

Bhubaneswar: Finance Minister Sitharaman's budget will bring sunshine for the farmers in Odisha. The major announcement that the PM KUSUM (Kisan Urja Suraksha evam Utthaan Mahabhiyan ) Yojana will cover an additional 15 lakh farmers for grid connected solar pump will prove a milestone in doubling the income of the farmers in the State.

As per the budget announcement, the Union government will operationalise a scheme that will enable farmers to set up solar power generation capacity on their fallow/barren lands, which they can sell it so to the grid.

It needs mentioning here that owing to shrinking of farm landholding in Odisha and they in turn proving unviable for farming due to unfavourable economies of scale, the barren and fallow farm land in the State are on the rise.

In 2007-08, the total fallow land in Odisha stood at 5.04 lakh hectare. It went up to 6.76 lakh hectare in 2017-18.  Data further shows owners of fallow land have migrated to other districts or states as labourers.

The budget proposal, therefore, has the potential to bring a turnaround in their status - from labourer to entrepreneur.

The reason: The potential of solar energy is rich in Odisha. As per a study by Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), the State receives an average solar radiation of 5.5 kWh/ Sqm area with around 300 clear sunny days every year. The feasible potential for power generation in the Solar Photovoltaic and the Solar thermal routes have been roughly estimated at 8000 MW and 2000 MW, respectively.

Significantly, the PM KUSUM Yojana was announced by the then FM Arun Jaitley in February 2018. And in October 2018, CM Naveen Patnaik has launched a similar scheme called Soura Jalanidhi in Odisha in October 2018. Under the scheme, the State government has decided to distribute 5,000 solar pumps to farmers, and targeted to bring 2500 acres under solar pump -led irrigation.

The progress of the scheme in the State at present is very tardy. But the 2020-21 budget announcement of bringing fallow lands under the PM - KUSUM will give a boost to the solarisation of farm land in the State.

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