Government's Rural & Solar Programmes

National Solar Mission : To increase the use of solar energy and to make it affordable, Government of India will launch the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission on 14th November 2009।

Rural Development: The special programmes for the development of rural and urban areas will be accelerated. The Government was successful to some extent in improving the infrastructure in rural areas through Bharat Nirman. But there is still a wide disparity between the development of rural and urban areas. To this end, the allocations under Bharat Nirman have been increased substantially in 2009. The Governement will set more ambitious targets for schemes for house construction and telecommunications in rural areas.

Rural Admnistrative Machinery: Government will make special efforts to strengthen the administrative machinery for our rural programmes. Those who live in villages and semi-urban areas should get services similar to the residents of urban areas. Communication and Information Technology can go a long way in achieving this objective.

National Solar Mission - Mega solar power programme

The Central Government announced a mega solar power capacity addition plan to make India the global leader in solar energy to match with the worldwide focus on climate change and exploring renewable energy sources to meet the emerging power needs of India.

The  National Solar Mission, aims to add 20,000 MW of solar energy generation capacity by 2020 and make it as cheap as the electricity from conventional sources. The mega plan would seek an investment of nearly Rs. 1 lakh crore over a 30-year period. To start the whole thing in a big way, the Government will make a huge outlay of Rs. 4,000 to 6,000 crore in the XI Plan. The outlay will be doubled during the XII Plan (2013-17).

The objective is to ensure  a capacity addition of one lakh MW by 2030 and two lakh MW of solar power by 2050. It would also seek solar power cost reduction to achieve grid tariff parity by 2020.

Experts have been faced with the challenge of producing solar power as cheaply as from coal or hydel sources by reducing the cost of solar power generation to Rs. 4-5 per kWh by 2017-20. The objective is to achieve rapid scale up to drive down costs, to spur domestic manufacturing and to validate the technological and economic viability of different solar applications.