Will Govt of India set up land bank, ‘reclaim' wasteland to set up solar power projects?

By NS Venkataraman*
Acquiring land for setting up solar power projects is one of the biggest challenges for solar project developers in India. Solar power project require large track of land and the cost of land is critical in reducing the overall project costs. To set up solar power project of one megawatt capacity, around 6,000 square metre (around 1.5 acre) of land is required.
By end of December, 2023, India’s installed capacity for solar power was around 74 GW and around 45GW of wind power. With the target of achieving 500GW of renewable power projects by 2030, India has to increase the installed capacity of solar power projects multifold.
To ensure that India would be able to have high solar power installed capacity by 2030 commensurate with the target of 500 GW for renewable energy, it is absolutely necessary that land acquisition issue for solar power projects should be sorted out once for all.
In a densely populated country like India, acquisition of land for any purpose, whether industrial, commercial, infrastructure, mining or other purpose have been a formidable ticklish issue.
In several cases, agricultural land is being sought to be taken over for such projects and there have been severe public resistance for such proposals, as this uproots the life of the farmers and agriculturists who have been depending on the agricultural land for their earnings and livelihood.
Not surprisingly, there have been protests and opposition for such move to acquire agricultural land. A careful and dispassionate study and analysis of the above scenario would highlight the fact that the apprehensions and anxiety are genuine and cannot be ignored or taken for granted under any circumstances.
As a result, in the last decade, a number of proposed and prospective industrial and infrastructure projects have been shelved or heavily delayed due to the land acquisition issues in the country.

Need for land bank for solar power project

It is high time that the Government of India should create a comprehensive policy and approach to ensure adequate land availability for solar power projects, without disturbing the agricultural operations or upsetting the livelihood and economic conditions of people belonging to lower income group.
It is necessary, to carry out a detailed land audit all over India to identify surplus/ unused land, which have not been put to use for more than five years and such land can be acquired by the government to set up solar power . project.
Most of such sites would be suitable for setting up solar power project in view of the tropical conditions in most part of the country and most period of the year.
There are many sick industrial units in large, medium and small scale level,which are not in operation for several years and number of them may have large area of unused land.
Such land as well as acreage, buildings and other facilities belonging to thousands of industrial units of various sizes that fell sick and were closed, with little or no prospects of being reopened, can be used to set up solar power projects , instead of taking over farmland.

A 2015-16 study estimated that India had around 55.76 million hectares of wasteland (16.96 per cent of the country’s total area), including dense scrub, waterlogged marshy land, sandy areas, degraded pastures/ grazing land, alkaline and saline land, barren rocky areas etc. (Source: NRSC, ISRO, Dept. of Space & Department of Land Resources, Ministry of rural Development).
Such wasteland can be recovered and reclaimed and put to use for setting up solar power projects.

Pattern of waste land distribution

Further, there are many operating industrial units all over India, which have large tracts of surplus and unused land. Similarly, there are many educational institutions and universities which have much land which has remained unutilised for decades.
Central and state governments, as well as the Indian Railways own land, possibly running into several thousands of acres, which are not in use. In view of the land acquisition issues, solar power projects are facing crisis situation to move on in expanding the capacity and meeting the energy requirement of the country.
Unfortunately, no organised study has been initiated by government so far to assess the availability of such unused and waste land and the feasibility of putting them to use. It is high time that the government looks into the matter with high sense of urgency.
---
*Trustee, Nandini Voice for The Deprived, Chennai

Comments

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

A comrade in culture and controversy: Yao Wenyuan’s revolutionary legacy

By Harsh Thakor* This year marks two important anniversaries in Chinese revolutionary history—the 20th death anniversary of Yao Wenyuan, and the 50th anniversary of his seminal essay "On the Social Basis of the Lin Biao Anti-Party Clique". These milestones invite reflection on the man whose pen ignited the first sparks of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and whose sharp ideological interventions left an indelible imprint on the political and cultural landscape of socialist China.

India's health workers have no legal right for their protection, regrets NGO network

Counterview Desk In a letter to Union labour and employment minister Santosh Gangwar, the civil rights group Occupational and Environmental Health Network of India (OEHNI), writing against the backdrop of strike by Bhabha hospital heath care workers, has insisted that they should be given “clear legal right for their protection”.

Uttarakhand tunnel disaster: 'Question mark' on rescue plan, appraisal, construction

By Bhim Singh Rawat* As many as 40 workers were trapped inside Barkot-Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi after a portion of the 4.5 km long, supposedly completed portion of the tunnel, collapsed early morning on Sunday, Nov 12, 2023. The incident has once again raised several questions over negligence in planning, appraisal and construction, absence of emergency rescue plan, violations of labour laws and environmental norms resulting in this avoidable accident.

History, culture and literature of Fatehpur, UP, from where Maulana Hasrat Mohani hailed

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat* Maulana Hasrat Mohani was a member of the Constituent Assembly and an extremely important leader of our freedom movement. Born in Unnao district of Uttar Pradesh, Hasrat Mohani's relationship with nearby district of Fatehpur is interesting and not explored much by biographers and historians. Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri has written a book on Maulana Hasrat Mohani and Fatehpur. The book is in Urdu. He has just come out with another important book, 'Hindi kee Pratham Rachna: Chandayan' authored by Mulla Daud Dalmai.' During my recent visit to Fatehpur town, I had an opportunity to meet Dr Mohammad Ismail Azad Fatehpuri and recorded a conversation with him on issues of history, culture and literature of Fatehpur. Sharing this conversation here with you. Kindly click this link. --- *Human rights defender. Facebook https://www.facebook.com/vbrawat , X @freetohumanity, Skype @vbrawat

Job opportunities decreasing, wages remain low: Delhi construction workers' plight

By Bharat Dogra* It was about 32 years back that a hut colony in posh Prashant Vihar area of Delhi was demolished. It was after a great struggle that the people evicted from here could get alternative plots that were not too far away from their earlier colony. Nirmana, an organization of construction workers, played an important role in helping the evicted people to get this alternative land. At that time it was a big relief to get this alternative land, even though the plots given to them were very small ones of 10X8 feet size. The people worked hard to construct new houses, often constructing two floors so that the family could be accommodated in the small plots. However a recent visit revealed that people are rather disheartened now by a number of adverse factors. They have not been given the proper allotment papers yet. There is still no sewer system here. They have to use public toilets constructed some distance away which can sometimes be quite messy. There is still no...

Women's rights leaders told to negotiate with Muslimness, as India's donor agencies shun the word Muslim

By A Representative Former vice-president Hamid Ansari has sharply criticized donor agencies engaged in nongovernmental development work, saying that they seek to "help out" marginalizes communities with their funds, but shy away from naming Muslims as the target group, something, he insisted, needs to change. Speaking at a book release function in Delhi, he said, since large sections of Muslims are poor, they need political as also social outreach.

Warning bells for India: Tribal exploitation by powerful corporate interests may turn into international issue

By Ashok Shrimali* Warning bells are ringing for India. Even as news drops in from Odisha that Adivasi villages, one after another, are rejecting the top UK-based MNC Vedanta's plea for mining, a recent move by two senior scholars Felix Padel and Samarendra Das suggests the way tribals are being exploited in India by powerful international and national business interests may become an international issue. In fact, one has only to count days when things may be taken up at the United Nations level, with India being pushed to the corner. Padel, it may be recalled, is a major British authority on indigenous peoples across the world, with several scholarly books to his credit.

Gujarat Bitcoin scam worth Rs 5,000 crore "linked" with BJP leaders: Need for Supreme Court monitored probe

By Shaktisinh Gohil* BJP hit a jackpot in the form of demonetisation, which it used as an alibi to convert black money into white in Gujarat. Even as party scrambles for answers of how the Ahmedabad District Cooperative Bank (ADCB), whose director is BJP president Amit Shah, received old currency worth Rs 745.58 crore in just five days, and how Rs 3118.51 crore was deposited in 11 district cooperative banks linked with Gujarat BJP leaders, a new mega Bitcoin scam, worth more than Rs 5,000 crore has been unraveled.

Counterview

Search This Blog