For decades, farmers had tilled the land outside the town of Nandgaon in western India, growing crops including corn and millet.
But in late 2022, Tata Power, one of the country’s largest energy producers, announced it would begin setting up hundreds of glinting photovoltaic panels stretching out across that sun-drenched patch of countryside in the state of Maharashtra.
The 100-megawatt solar development by the arm of the vast Indian conglomerate, which aims to supply clean electricity to domestic steel producer Viraj Profiles, alarmed the local community. Many see the solar plant as a corporate land grab of a slice of state-owned territory that their families had been granted permission to cultivate over multiple generations.