Off-grid solar lighting systems: A way align India's sustainable and inclusive development goals

Revisiting and uplifting Solar Energy sector is one of the major steps taken by India in its pursuit for sustainable development in the recent past. The present paper, though appreciates this move, makes a case for less focused tail-end solar applications: Solar Off-grid Lighting Systems (SOLS), Solar Lanterns and Solar Home Lighting Systems. Following a critical review of the policies, we present an overview of SOLS-diffusion trend in the past one and a half decades; the pattern of diffusion across states and financial assistance allotted for development and promotion of SOLS. We examine the adoption pattern at household level and factors that determine the same employing a multinomial logit model. Installation of SOLS witnessed a declining trend over the years. States exhibited considerable variation in the installation of the two SOLS and the funds allocated by the central government are not comparable to their respective energy poverty intensity. It is encouraging to note that more than half of the SOLS adopters find it an adequate source of energy. Improvement in the status and increase in the cost of alternative sources of energy adversely influence the household's choice of using SOLS as a complementary source of energy; improvement in the status of SOLS and increase in the financial strength of the household encourages them to adopt one.