Can India Transition to Solar Without Leaving Farmers Behind? Lessons from Rajasthan’s First Farmer-Owned Agri-PV Pilot
September 28, 2026
Earlier this year, Rajasthan’s first farmer-owned Agri-PV plant was inaugurated under the Indian government’s PM-KUSUM program. As Laxmi Sharma and Subhodeep Basu at the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) explain, Agri-PV involves installing elevated, ground-mounted PV panels so farmers can generate electricity and additional income while cultivating the land underneath. They share learnings from ICRIER’s work supporting the early implementation of this model in India, where the key challenges have involved not technical design and engineering questions, but the difficulties of coordinating people, processes and institutions — and establishing and maintaining farmer trust.
