Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on Friday introduced India to a 750 Mega Watt powered Solar Power Plant in the Rewa District of Madhya Pradesh. This was accompanied by his statement on his strong believe that India needs Solar Power Plant as a first step to be Self- Dependent (Atma Nirbhar).
Amidst the inferno in the India border separating China, Indian population is chiming with anti- China shoutouts. Within the following days of such a populous initiative, the government accompanied by taking multiple steps to step down upon China. The decisions taken or executed are still a topic of debate considering the economic outlook of the current situation. However, India is surely planning to be tangible with whatever resources is restricted to their own land, which at least is not shared by China.
The Solar Power, if said in layman’s terms, is the energy derived from the Sun which is further stored and used to convert into Electrical Energy. Even though the concept is quite simple, this does not reflect upon the apparatus which empowers the idea. Amongst cost the apparatus has a quirky setup while assembling. But pros and cons are prevalent to any resources that are used by human being. When considering the installation and apparatus charges the elephant in the room is the amount which has to be paid by the customers to make use of this fine system. To understand this, you need to know the basic unit consumption of a regular Nuclear or Hydro Powered electricity which is currently under major use. So, the average Indian pays Rs. 7.22 per Unit consumed currently; and the unit consumption per month varies from 110 – 277 which ranges around Rs. 800 – 2000 monthly. The solar power plant which has been installed is assumed to cost Rs. 2.95 per unit. This pulls down the cost to Rs. 300 – 800 on the same set of units.
This clearly begs the question, does this initiative truly pushes India one step toward being self-dependent enough? The answer might result in controversy but there truly are two phases to it. A group of people might (with or without judgement) declare this the “Biggest Step Taken to Push Indian Economy” and another school of thought might consider this to be a trivial side dish to the “5 Trillion Economy”. Logically, reliability on Solar Power plant has always been at large and has still not been verified. It might be enough to power a town or village on lower area or power need but might result in lacking significance to power up a city of varying economic class and neighborhood.
The initiative which has been taken clearly to boost the (atma-nirbharta) self- dependence doesn’t really embark upon the major part of livelihood and does not really offer anything new to the plate. World’s largest statue followed by Asia’s largest solar plant gives a light political flavor to the initiative. Irrespective of the consideration over various schools of thought, the future only awaits the endgame of the Plant and whether this, truly, will be any benefit to the Self Dependent India initiative.
Saswati Chattopadhyay
Nice! Thanks for sharing.