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Jayaram Reddy and Hira Bano live on the edge of two of India’s largest solar parks – their villages are separated by barbed wire fences and walls from miles of gleaming blue solar panels.
Every day, they wake up to a power plant on their doorstep and wonder if their future will be as bright as solar – a key source of India’s switch to green energy to free its economy from climate-warming coal.
Bhadla Solar Park in northwestern Rajasthan and Pavagada Solar Park in southern Karnataka — one of the largest solar parks in the world with a combined capacity of 4,350 megawatts — are believed to be India’s most renewable energy parks. energy capacity to meet the milestone of reaching the target of 500 GW by 2030.More than half comes from solar energy.
More than 2,000 kilometers apart, Reddy and Barnes and Noble were among hundreds of local herders and farmers who were asked to weigh the potential benefits of a solar park — jobs, hospitals, schools, roads and water — in exchange for their land.spent their entire lives.
“We were told we should thank the government for choosing our area to build the solar park,” Reddy, a 65-year-old farmer, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation as he sat with his friends in the village of Vollur near the Pavagada Solar Park.”They point to our unpredictable agricultural yields, dry land and scarce groundwater, and promise that our future will be 100 times better once the solar park is developed. We believe in all of their promises.”
But researchers say India’s largest solar park has failed to deliver on those promises, leading to protests and boycotts from communities trying to protect their jobs, land and future.
In terms of alienating residents, both the Bhadla and Pavagada solar parks serve as a warning to 50 other such solar projects approved by Indian authorities, which will add about 38 GW of total installed capacity.
Officials from India’s Federal Ministry of Renewable Energy insist that all solar projects must ensure that local people are not affected and their existing livelihoods are not affected.
But as state governments enact ambitious solar policies and private companies invest millions to build factories, both ignore the needs of marginalized communities, including pastoralists and smallholder farmers, according to the researchers.
“Communities affected by solar parks are rarely consulted or informed about the program or its impact,” said independent researcher Bhargavi S Rao, who has mapped the challenges facing communities near solar parks in Karnataka.
“The government says they have a partnership with the community,” she added.”But in reality, it’s not an equal partnership, which is why people are either protesting or demanding more.”
Anand Kumar, 29, who owns a water bottling plant in Pavagada, uses his YouTube channel as a platform to educate villagers near the solar park about climate change, clean energy and what’s happening on the 13,000-acre fenced-in land.
“We live near a world-famous solar park, but no one really knows what’s going on,” said Kumar, whose channel has more than 6,000 subscribers.
Between clips of selling cattle, cultural activities and farming tips, Kumar interviewed his friends who work as security guards at the solar park, officials explaining power generation and residents documenting their plight.
“We can only fight for it if we know what’s going on and what our rights are,” he said.
Teenage girls in Bhadla, who also want to be part of the solar boom, have called for the reopening of their village school after more than two years of closure.
Their communities have lost state-owned land near the border with Pakistan, where they have herded animals for generations, to the Bhadla Solar Park – where they have no chance to work due to lack of education and skills.
Girls who were once aggrieved now want to study so they can get jobs in solar parks, their desire rooted in disappearing traditional ways of earning a living and exposure to the new world of offices where people earn monthly wages.
“If I had an education, I could work in a solar park. I could manage the papers in the office, or do their accounts,” said Barnes, 18, who has finished tenth grade, sitting cross-legged in her sparse room.”I have to study or I’ll spend my life doing housework.”
A day in the life of Bano and the other Bhadla girls included doing housework and sewing pieces of cloth into rugs for dowry.They are afraid to see their mothers trapped in family life.
“There are too many restrictions in this village,” Asma Kardon, 15, wrote in a Hindi essay, recalling her disappointment when the school closed as she prepared for her tenth grade exams.
During the well-watered break, she said her only wish was to restart classes so she could fulfill her long-term work ambitions.
Pradip Swarnakar, a climate change policy expert who teaches at India’s Kanpur Institute of Technology, said solar energy “is considered sacrosanct in the field of renewable energy” because it is a clean, ethical form of energy.
But for communities, he noted, it doesn’t matter whether they have coal mines or solar parks among them, as they seek decent livelihoods, a better way of life and access to electricity.
Coal remains India’s main energy source, accounting for 70% of its electricity output, but fossil fuels are known for polluting groundwater and air and sparking human-animal conflicts.
Unlike potholed roads, pollution, and everyday explosions that crash appliances in houses near coal mines, solar parks work quietly, and the smooth roads leading to them are clean and airy.
For locals, however, these benefits are overshadowed by their loss of land and jobs and the scarcity of new jobs associated with solar parks.
In Badra, past families owned 50 to 200 goats and sheep, as well as cows and camels, and cultivated millet.In Pavagarda, enough peanuts are harvested to give to relatives for free.
Now farmers buy produce they used to grow themselves, sell their animals, and wonder if their belief in large-scale solar projects to sustain them is wrong.
“There are not many solar jobs for locals, funds for development in our region are still not spent, and young people continue to migrate to big cities in search of jobs,” said farmer Shiva Reddy.
The village of Bhadla saw several men head to the Middle East to work when the herdsmen returned, as jobs opened up during the construction of the solar park a few years ago.
But when it was nearing completion, locals lacked the technical education and skills to secure relatively few job opportunities when the park began operations.
“We can tell one camel from another by the camel’s tracks, or find our cows by the sound of bells tied around their necks – but how do I use these skills now?” Village Chief Mohammad Sujawal Mehr asked.
“Big companies surround us, but only a handful of us have jobs there,” he said, noting that even a security position at a solar park requires tenth grade reading.
Coal mining and electricity currently employ around 3.6 million people in India, while renewable energy only employs around 112,000, with solar accounting for 86,000.
Researchers estimate that by 2030, this rising industry will create more than 3 million green jobs in solar and wind energy.But so far, opportunities for most villagers have been limited to basic activities such as security, cleaning solar panels and mowing the lawn in the park or cleaning the office.
“Clean energy doesn’t employ 800 to 900 people like thermal power plants do, and solar parks only have 5 to 6 people a day,” said Sarthak Shukla, an independent consultant on sustainability issues. “You don’t need workers but technicians to run the park. Local Work is not the USP for the clean energy transition.”
Since 2018, the Pavagada Solar Park has created around 3,000 jobs and 1,800 permanent jobs during construction.Bhadla employed 5,500 people to build it and provided about 1,100 operations and maintenance jobs for an estimated time of 25 years.
“These numbers will never increase,” said researcher Rao, noting that an acre of farmland supports at least four livelihoods, suggesting that more jobs are lost than created after the land is taken over by the solar park.
When Karnataka first approached Pavagada farmers about using their land for solar parks six years ago, it was already ravaged by successive droughts and mounting debt.
RN Akkalappa is one of the few people who leases his land for a fixed annual rent, while also managing to get a job in the park because of his experience with drilling motors.
“We were hesitant, but were told that if we didn’t agree to the terms, the solar park would be built elsewhere,” he said.”We were just blackmailed into agreeing.”
N Amaranath, deputy general manager of technology at Karnataka Solar Development Ltd, said this approach means farmers continue to own the land.
“Our model is globally recognized and the Pavagada Solar Park is considered a success in many ways, especially in terms of working with the community,” he added.
However, farmer Shiva Reddy said giving up his land was a “difficult choice” as the income did not meet his needs.”Expenses are going up rapidly and rents won’t be enough for years to come. We’re going to need jobs,” he said.
Keshav Prasad, chief executive of Saurya Urja, Bhadla’s largest solar park operator, said the company was “actively involved in improving the quality of life in its 60 neighbouring villages”.
Including the community is the primary responsibility of solar companies, Prasad said.He noted that Saurya Urja operates mobile medical carts and veterinarians on wheels, and has trained about 300 locals in plumbing, solar panel installation and data entry.
However, with India’s solar tariffs among the lowest in the world, and with those tariffs likely to fall further as companies bid aggressively to win projects, cost-cutting measures are already affecting labor-intensive jobs.
In Pavagada, robots are used to clean solar panels because they are cheaper and more efficient, further reducing employment opportunities for villagers, according to park operators.
Post time: Mar-07-2022
