No empty land: Comparing distributional outcomes of solar parks across land tenure regimes in India

Large-scale solar park development has accelerated in India over the last decade, with multiple 500 MW + parks being built as part of the country's effort to decarbonise its electricity system. These projects require thousands of acres of contiguous land. However, land is a socially embedded resource with no ‘empty’ land available that does not already serve some purpose. Drawing on field research and qualitative interviews across three sites—Bhadla and Fatehgarh in Rajasthan, and Pavagada in Karnataka—we analyse the distributional injustices that accompany large-scale solar park development. We compare two land tenure arrangements: private agricultural land and government-owned land that local communities use for farming and grazing. Using the social-ecological systems framework, we conceptualise these tenure arrangements in terms of inequalities in land ownership, the importance of the resource to different socio-economic groups, and the property regimes under which solar parks are developed. We find, first, that ownership of private agricultural land in Karnataka enables farmers to claim monetary compensation. This is in contrast with solar parks in Rajasthan, where the absence of land-use records and formal titles prevents some farmers and agropastoral groups from accessing any monetary benefits. Second, agropastoral groups and landless households—often from marginalised caste groups—are disadvantaged across all cases, as they lose access to common property resources for livestock rearing as well as to private farmland for wage labour. These findings highlight how diverse land tenure systems shape, and often deepen, unequal distributional outcomes from India's solar transition.