India's farms are witnessing a silent transformation. As temperatures soar and monsoons become unpredictable, it is increasingly women—not men—who are bearing the burden of keeping agriculture alive. This phenomenon, known as the feminisation of agriculture, reveals a disturbing truth. Climate change doesn't affect everyone equally, and Narendra Modi's ambitious renewable energy push is doing little to address the gendered realities of India's agrarian crisis.
The numbers paint a stark picture. Studies show that when temperatures rise above normal levels, women's likelihood of working in agriculture increases by nine percentage points. This isn't empowerment—it is distress displacement. As climate shocks intensify, men are abandoning farms for urban wage labour, leaving women to manage increasingly unviable agricultural operations.
The result? Women-headed farming households lose $37 billion annually to climate impacts—8 percenrt more than their male counterparts.
The Double Burden of Heat and Labour
Visit any village in Maharashtra's sugarcane belt or Bihar's wheat fields, and one will encounter women like Rukmini Kamble, who now takes two painkillers daily just to endure working in scorching heat. She collapses every ten days from heat exhaustion but has no choice; she's her family's sole earner.
This is the reality for millions of Indian women who constitute nearly 80 percent of the rural agricultural workforce.
The physics of climate change is straightforward, not a complex one. Hotter temperatures reduce crop yields and agricultural profits. But the social consequences are deeply gendered. When harvests fail and farm incomes plummet, men migrate to cities seeking construction jobs or factory work. Women, constrained by caregiving responsibilities and limited mobility, remain behind to manage farms, collect water over longer distances, and stretch dwindling resources to feed their families.
This isn't just about more work—it is about more precarious work. Women are pushed into agriculture not because of new opportunities, but because they lack alternatives. Without land titles (women own just 11 percent of agricultural land in India), access to formal credit, or agricultural extension services, they're farming with one hand tied behind their backs.
The $37 Billion Inequality
The Food and Agriculture Organisation's 2024 report "The Unjust Climate" quantified what rural women have known for years: climate change widens existing gender gaps. For every additional day of extreme heat, the value of women-managed plots drops three percent more than men's. Female-headed households lose $83 per capita annually to heat stress alone.
Why this disparity? Women face what researchers call "compounding vulnerabilities." They have less access to climate-resilient seeds, irrigation technology, and weather information. They spend more time on unpaid care work—caring for children, elderly family members, and livestock—leaving less time for income-generating activities.
During droughts, women walk further to fetch water, sometimes traveling distances that consume hours they could have spent on farming.
Physiologically, women are also more susceptible to heat stress. While controlled studies of military personnel found women 3.7 times more likely to be heat intolerant—largely due to differences in aerobic fitness—female agricultural workers face additional vulnerabilities including restrictive clothing norms and limited access to cooling resources.
Modi's Solar Blindspot
Against this backdrop, India has achieved remarkable milestones in renewable energy. The country reached 50 percent non-fossil fuel electricity capacity five years ahead of schedule, installed over 110 GW of solar capacity, and launched ambitious schemes like PM Surya Ghar (targeting 10 million rooftop solar installations) and PM KUSUM (for solar agricultural pumps).
Yet these policies remain stubbornly gender-blind. Of the 1.6 lakh youth trained under MNRE's flagship solar skill development programs, only 5.8 percent are women. In the renewable energy workforce overall, women constitute just 11 percent of employees—far below the global average of 32 percent. The Modi government's energy transition celebrates technological prowess and investment figures but ignores the feminisation of agricultural distress happening in parallel.
Consider the PM KUSUM scheme, designed to provide solar pumps to farmers. While potentially beneficial, its implementation overlooks ground realities. Women farmers often can't access these subsidies because they lack land titles and formal credit.
The irony is sharp. India invests billions in solar infrastructure while the women growing its food face collapsing livelihoods from the very climate crisis that necessitates this energy transition. Policy documents tout 500 GW renewable capacity targets for 2030 but remain silent on how female agricultural workers—who already earn just Rs 300 ($3.60) per day—will survive worsening heat stress.
A pilot program in Jharkhand specifically targeting women farmers with solar pumps is the exception, not the rule. Most renewable energy policies don't even mention women farmers, let alone address their specific vulnerabilities.
A Political Economy of Neglect
This isn't accidental oversight—it is structural. India's agrarian crisis has been building for decades, driven by neoliberal policies that exposed smallholder farmers to global market competition while withdrawing state support. Rising input costs, falling crop prices, and mounting debt have made farming increasingly precarious, contributing to over 270,000 farmer suicides between 1995 and 2011.
Women's agricultural labour has been invisible in this crisis. They're categorised as "agricultural labourers" rather than "farmers," excluded from policy decisions, farmer producer organisations, and water user associations. When male family members migrate, women take on farming responsibilities but without corresponding decision-making power or resource control.
Modi's renewable energy agenda, for all its climate credentials, perpetuates this invisibility. The emphasis remains on large-scale infrastructure, financial investments, and technology deployment—domains traditionally dominated by male engineers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs. Meanwhile, gender-responsive policies that could actually support women farmers—secure land rights, accessible credit, climate-smart agricultural training, heat-stress protection protocols—receive token attention at best.
Just 6 percent of national climate adaptation plans in surveyed countries mention women. India's policies are no exception. Despite experts urging that gender considerations move "beyond checklists" to become institutionalised through inclusive planning and gender budgeting, the gap between rhetoric and reality remains vast.
Toward Climate Justice
What would genuinely gender-responsive climate policy look like?
First, recognise women as farmers, not just labourers. This means land rights reform, easier access to agricultural credit without collateral requirements, and inclusion in farmer welfare schemes. Second, design renewable energy programs with women's needs centered—not as afterthoughts.
Innovative models exist. In Bihar, women's self-help groups operate solar-powered irrigation pumps as micro-enterprises, earning $1,200 annually while reducing irrigation costs by 50 percent for smallholders.
In Madhya Pradesh, women-only water user associations manage solar irrigation systems with transparent revenue sharing. These initiatives prove that when women control technology and resources, benefits multiply- but they remain small-scale exceptions.
Third, implement heat-action plans that protect agricultural workers. This includes rest breaks during peak heat hours, access to cooling resources, and health monitoring—measures that seem basic but are largely absent in India's agricultural policies.
The climate crisis demands more than solar panels and wind turbines. It demands justice. As long as India's energy transition ignores the women growing its food, carrying its water, and bearing the brunt of climate change, it will remain fundamentally unjust. Modi's solar surge might power India's cities, but it's time to ask: who is left in the dark?
(David Sathuluri is a recent graduate from Columbia and he is engaged with questions around caste, climate change and urban spaces. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author's. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)