Haryana power cos think out of box

CHANDIGARH: In what could prove to be a major breakthrough in breaking the wheat-paddy cycle, and thereby saving power and ground water in a big way, the Haryana government is considering a proposal to give an incentive of Rs 2,000 per acre to farmers who switch over from tubewell-fed paddy crop to a largely rain fed crop.
Sources said the proposal, moved by financial commissioner power R N Prasher, has been discussed and later put up on file to chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda.A conference of agricultural scientists from Haryana Agriculture University (HAU), Hisar and Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, is being called in Hisar in mid-September to work out the modalities.
The proposal says that the farmers in tubewell-fed areas of the state, who have grown paddy over the last three years, will be offered an agreement by the power companies in the state that if they switch over to a largely rainfed crops like maize, pulses, oilseeds, green manure and fodder crops, they get an assured incentive of Rs 2,000 per acre from the power companies, which will be in addition to their earnings from the new crop. The companies propose to pay this amount from the subsidy they get from the government on supplying power to the agricultural sector.
The sources said that the proposal talks about concentrating on the fringe areas of the paddy growing belt like Rohtak, Bhiwani, Mahendragarh, parts of Jind, Yamunanagar and Ambala districts.
Explaining the rationale behind the proposal, the sources said 50 to 60 percent of the total 800 lakh units of power supplied in the power deficient state during the paddy season was going towards charging the tubewells, because of which besides depletion of the water table, industries were forced to shut down laying off thousands of night shift staff. The loss in production also meant less taxes coming to the state.
The sources said according to rough estimates 1600 MW of power was supplied to the tubewells over the three month paddy watering season which required massive strengthening of the power supply infrastructure. Because of the increased load, on an average 10,000 transformers are burnt down during a season which have to be replaced at an astronomical cost. The net loss to the state on account of the power subsidy and all other factors during the paddy season has been roughly worked out to Rs 30,000 per acre of paddy sown.
The argument of the power department is that even if 25 percent of the tubewell-fed paddy growers shift to an alternative crop, the power companies will save at least 100 lakh units (roughly 400 MW) each season, which is just about equivalent to the shortfall of power in the state. By diverting this supply to the industries, the companies stand to gain around Rs 300 crore annually, the sources added.