Despite a scheme launched by the Indian government
in 2017 that has declared achieving close to 100 percent
electrification in the country, studies have shown that only
65 percent of rural enterprises in India report having electricity grid connection (Smart Power India, 2019). While
millions of households have been positively impacted
by access to electricity, small businesses and smallholder
farmers (those with holdings of less than 2 acres) in
rural India have been left out of the equation or receive
very unreliable power supply. Byproducts of the energy
poverty experienced by India’s Bottom of the Pyramid
(BoP) population include an enormous carbon footprint
produced by the use of traditional fossil fuels such as
diesel and kerosene, and economic stagnation as a result
of the agrarian crisis in India.
