Targeting Agricultural Electricity Subsidies in Haryana

PIs drew a representative sample of 1,600 farmers from adult landholders in Haryana viastratified random sampling. A self-weighted sample was created by randomly selecting villages from all 22 districts of Haryana. In total, 200 villages were selected, and eight farmers were selected from each village, bringing the total sample to 1,600. Morsel team asked farmers to share information that is required to estimate agricultural electricity subsidy benefits: landholding size, number of electric pumps owned, horsepower of electric pumps, average number of irrigation days in each cropping cycle (rabi and kharif), average running hours of the electric pump on each irrigation day, and metering and average annual payment for agricultural electricity. Electricity consumption is a particularly important metric and one where there is a significant risk that the farmer may not report data accurately, most likely because of poor recollection. The survey addressed this by verifying the average pumping hours reported in the survey with the minor-irrigation census. PIs observed that our sample closely matches data from the census. This was the only proxy available in the absence of bills and meters: 45% of farmers reported having meters, out of which 11% were functional. In the absence of bills and metered consumption, the study used a proxy measure to estimate annual agricultural electricity consumption. The following formula was applied for each cropping cycle: Wattage of electric pump × number of appliances × average daily hours of use This data was then summed for the two cropping cycles—kharif and rabi—to arrive at an estimate of the annual electricity consumption. Annual agricultural electricity subsidy per farmer was then estimated by multiplying annual electricity consumption by the per-unit subsidy. In FY 2020, the subsidy per unit was INR 7.06 (USD 0.09) (Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission, 2021a). This study has focused on per capita subsidy for farmers and results shown in the next chapter show per capita subsidy irrespective of pump ownership. Ninety-two per cent of the 1,600 surveyed farmers were landowners and there maining, tenant farmers. It was unclear if tenant farmers could make decisions on pump ownership, so this study shows results for only landowners