As the government prepares the next phase of PM-KUSUM, India faces a question that goes far beyond installing more pumps. Can the country expand clean-energy irrigation without worsening the groundwater crisis already confronting large parts of rural India?
Over the past five years, PM-KUSUM has installed more than 2.5 million solar pumps, supported by subsidies that have brought the technology within reach of small farmers. That is a significant clean-energy achievement. But irrigation is often criticised on the argument that once pumping becomes virtually free, farmers have little reason to conserve groundwater.
That argument misses an important point. The problem is not solar power itself. It is how the irrigation system is designed, who owns it, how farmers are paid and whether saving water has any economic value.
Experience from Gujarat offers an important lesson. Under the Suryashakti Kisan Yojana, around 100 agricultural feeders were transitioned to solar energy. Farmers could sell surplus electricity back to the grid. With a feed-in tariff of around ₹7 per unit, participating farmers earned roughly ₹21,900 a year on average. More importantly, growth in their energy consumption and irrigation use slowed compared with non-solar farmers.
The incentive changed the equation. Electricity that was not used for pumping became something farmers could sell.
A different model in Bangladesh provides another insight. Under a centralised fee-for-service system, solar pump operators supply irrigation water to several farmers within a defined area. Even though solar irrigation was 20-30% cheaper than diesel irrigation, farmers did not use more water. Excessive pumping for one farm would reduce the operator’s ability to serve others. Water efficiency therefore became commercially important.
These examples show why India cannot treat every solar pump in the same way.
Groundwater conditions differ enormously across the country. In hard-rock aquifer regions with limited storage, additional irrigation may provide relatively little benefit. In Punjab and Haryana, where rice and wheat cultivation is already heavily irrigated, simply adding cheaper energy may not substantially expand the irrigated area. Eastern India presents the opposite challenge. Large areas remain rainfed because farmers lack reliable electricity and face high diesel costs. There, solar irrigation can improve agricultural productivity and climate resilience.
The environmental and fiscal stakes are equally large. Groundwater irrigation in India is estimated to generate 45-62 million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, while agricultural electricity subsidies across states exceed ₹1 lakh crore every year. Estimates from Gujarat suggest that each grid-connected solar farmer can offset about 12.3 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually through on-farm use and electricity supplied to the grid.
PM-KUSUM 2.0 should therefore move beyond a single national template.
In water-stressed regions, grid-connected pumps and solarised agricultural feeders should reward farmers for consuming less electricity and pumping less groundwater. Buyback prices must be attractive, grid connections simple and DISCOMs given incentives to participate. Feeder solarisation should be paired with water-saving measures, including micro-irrigation and payments for reduced pumping.
Where farmers still lack reliable irrigation, the priority should be different. Standalone solar pumps can expand access, particularly in areas with poor grid connectivity and relatively low groundwater risk. Community models involving farmer cooperatives, water-user associations and irrigation entrepreneurs can also reduce the need for every farmer to own a separate pump.
India does not have to choose between solar irrigation and groundwater conservation. It has to design the two together. The success of PM-KUSUM 2.0 should ultimately be measured not only by how many solar pumps are installed, but by whether farmers gain reliable irrigation, DISCOMs reduce subsidy burdens, emissions fall and precious groundwater lasts longer.
