Budget 2020: Extra earnings for farmers through solar pumps

In a bid to replicate a Gujarat experience of solar pumps on national scale, the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a major initiative towards creating an additional income source for the farmers through solar power generation.

In her Budget speech for 2020-21 on Saturday, the Finance Minister stated that 20 lakh farmers across the country will be provided solar pumps in a bid to encourage solar generation on the barren land with the farmers.

Stating that “anna dataa can be urja dataa” or farmer can become energy generator, Sitharaman stated that there have been experiments where farmers have linked pump-sets to Solar Energy. “We aim to provide 20 lakh farmers to set up solar pumps.