RAJ KUMAR
Ranchi, November 16: A high-level stakeholders’ meet titled ‘Solar Pumps for Women: Strengthening the Energy, Water; Agricultural Nexus’ was organised today in Ranchi. The meeting was organised by JREDA in collaboration with SwitchON Foundation under the PSR Program supported by FCDO, Govt. of UK.
Speaking at the event during the opening keynote address, JREDA director K.K Verma said, “There is an urgent need to shift the energy loads of the agricultural activities to solar energy, JREDA has been actively promoting this among the women farmers, who are certainly the ambassador of change for this revolutionary transition underway.”
“Switching to Solar Pump makes more economic sense today than ever before and JREDA is committed to the installation of over 4 Lakh standalone off grid solar pumps,” he added.
Udit Mathur, Energy Advisor from DFID heading the PSR Program said, “There is a tremendous opportunity for a clean energy transformation within the agriculture sector today, we must take leverage of this wonderful opportunity in hand. By focussing on women’s awareness of the scheme and access to finance we can make the programme more inclusive, thereby increasing uptake and unlocking multiple developmental co-benefits for women farmers.”
Vinay Jaju, MD of SwitchON Foundation said, “We are extremely happy to work under the leadership of Government of Jharkhand in promoting solar pumps, water conservation and sustainable agriculture through the SEWA Network. We want to create evidence from the ground through our various projects in collaboration with JREDA and other line departments to ensure marginal women farmers benefit across the state for sustainable development across Jharkhand.”
The Jharkhand State Renewable Energy Department (JREDA) has been actively working towards promoting standalone off-grid solar agricultural pumps under the PM KUSUM Yojna, launched in 2019. Under this programme, the union ministry has set aside a target in 2019 to install 20 lakh standalone solar agricultural pumps across India.
The major aspiration has been to help farmers access reliable day-time solar power for irrigation, reduce power subsidies, and decarbonise agriculture. JREDA in this regard has taken an exemplary step of prioritizing the involvement of women into this mission, with an objective to empower women farmers as well as at the same time build awareness about the programme.
As many as 10,000 solar pumps have been sanctioned for the year 2019-20 under the current programme for Jharkhand. JREDA believes that the active involvement of women into this mission has worked out really well. As of now it has created an environment where women champion as farmers alongside their male counterparts and feel empowered to do so.
As of today, 7 crore Indian women work in the agriculture sector and produce over 60-80% of the food – while only 13 % of the women have the rights over their assets. As per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the agricultural yield would increase by 20-30% if women had the same resources as men.
The Jharkhand government’s efforts in this direction have therefore encouraged women to apply for the solar water pumps and thus help them in asset creation and ownership. The approach has created an innovative method to include particularly those women who do not have land in their name. These women can now do an affidavit and easily apply for solar pumps and those applications to be treated with priority.
