Friday, August 02, 2013: At SolarCon 2013 in Bengaluru, Dr. Harish Hande, the Ramon Magsassay award winner emphasised on the fact that the industry should have the guts to enter into the market without government subsidies. For this, he stated that cross subsidy of green power usage should be used as risk guarantee to banks to finance solar programmes in rural areas, enmasse.
“A street vendor customises his or her expenses and investment to his or her needs in a village to sustain herself. The solar industry needs to learn this from the street vendor. If the government finances through rural banks then the rural market can become a huge potential for investments as well making villagers bankable. Look at the Siddis today, they have repaid the loans taken to install solar systems and are interested to take loans to open their small business now,” Hande stated according to a TOI report.
At the event, Hande criticised the industry as well as the government for not breaking business models and hesitating in entering into the rural areas, where the highest potential can be exploited. “Off grid solar power will help make even a villager a social entrepreneur but big companies would not be interested to see how the social revolution takes place than his own business flourishing. Cost cutting and no innovation in marketing has let this industry look less dominating which is not true,” he added.
Moreover, he also urged the energy providers to tap into the mid-day meal, education or women and child welfare department in order to make the lives of people sustainable. The fifth edition of SolarCon in Bengaluru attracted conglomerates of companies, individuals, experts from the field and officials from renewable energy departments who gathered with the motive of improving and enabling energy efficient worlds.
Apart from this, he also maintained that the state government should remove VAT on such products so that even the middle and lower income groups can afford these products. He made a remark that there is a need for providing incentives to urban youth so that those who have de-alienated from what is happening in rural India is ready to take active interest in it. “Ask any top b-school student what is the interest rate of any rural bank in his native land, he wouldn’t know but he would rattle the interest rates and business models of top MNC banks. This needs to be changed. If you need to change improve marketing models, tap the rural sector and break the social hierarchy,” Hande pointed out.
