The trouble began when the electricity supply to agricultural tube wells in Manjhoshori, Naseerabad, was changed from three-phase to two-phase.
For Mohammad Anwar Manjhoo, a local farmer, the timing could not have been worse.
His Rabi crops, including wheat, corn and pulses, were approaching maturity. His tube well, run on subsidised electricity, was the source of irrigation for his fields. Then, suddenly, the power supply was disrupted, and so was, consequently, the water supply to the crops.
“Just when the crops were approaching maturity, we ran out of water,” Manjhoo said.
Come harvest time and the effect could be seen, even quantified. A 16-acre block that normally produced between 600 and 700 maunds of wheat yielded around 500 maunds after the water shortage, he said. Between 250 and 300 acres of his land was affected.
“This became the story of almost every household,” said Manjhoo.
The interruption came as Balochistan was undertaking a major change in the way its farmers power agricultural tube wells. The government had decided to move thousands of subsidised agricultural connections from the electricity grid to solar power to solve a problem that had been building for years. Agricultural tube wells had depended heavily on subsidised electricity. The subsidy was expensive for the government, while the Quetta Electric Supply Company (Qesco) faced mounting financial pressure and farmers complained that the electricity they were supposed to receive was often unavailable or insufficient.
Solarisation offered the government a different arrangement. Instead of continuing to pay a recurring electricity subsidy, it would provide financial support for solar systems, disconnect the agricultural tube wells from the grid and shift farmers to solar-powered irrigation.
A gradual transition to solar
The Balochistan solarisation programme was launched with a promise of completion within three months, with uninterrupted water supply for farmers. The Rs 55 billion project included shifting around 28,000 agricultural tube wells from grid electricity to solar, with the federal government contributing 70 percent of the funding and the remaining 30 percent covered by the Balochistan government. However, implementation was slow and unwieldy.
For Manjhoo, however, the transition was measured in immediate terms. With his crop still standing in the field, the power was interrupted.
Farmers and their representatives say the problem was the sequence in which the transition took place. Khalid Hussain Bathh, chairman of Kissan Ittehad Pakistan, said farmers in Naseerabad were promised compensation for solarisation but faced electricity cuts before receiving the money. “Before payments were made, electricity connections were cut, and the supply was shifted from three-phase to two-phase,” Bathh said.
The result was that tube wells remained shut and crops suffered from the shortage of irrigation water.
“Crops were destroyed due to the unavailability of irrigation water,” he said, adding that farmers had sown crops on the assurance of the provincial irrigation minister but that their seeds went to waste because of the water shortage. Kissan Ittehad took note that farmers were suffering financial losses after electricity connections were disconnected while solarisation funds had not yet been released.
Qesco claims compensation preceded disconnections, but official federal briefings from March 2025 confirm thousands of premature disconnections while energy departments were still negotiating payments in May. Its records show that compensation was paid in phases, followed by disconnection of the corresponding agricultural connections.
If the payments and disconnections happened in the sequence described by Qesco, the problem was one of implementation and timing of individual cases. If farmers' accounts are correct, some were left without adequate irrigation while waiting for the promised transition.
Why the government wanted the change
The old system that subsidised power for agricultural irrigation had its own problems. According to energy economist and policy expert Zubair Khan of the Indus Consortium, the agricultural tube well subsidy dates back to July 2001. It was introduced because farmers in Balochistan depended heavily on groundwater for irrigation, particularly in areas with limited canal irrigation.
The arrangement gave farmers access to subsidised electricity, but the subsidy was ultimately paying for the energy used to pump groundwater.
Under the 2015 arrangement, a tube-well owner paid Rs10,000 a month while the government subsidised the remaining electricity bill up to a ceiling of Rs75,000. The federal government contributed 40 percent and Balochistan 60 percent. The arrangement was based on a specified motor size and an assumption of eight hours of electricity supply a day.
Farmers increasingly complained that they were not receiving those eight hours.
By 2023-24, some farmers were reporting that they received only around three hours of electricity a day.That left the government paying a large subsidy while farmers still struggled to irrigate their land.
Khan also pointed to another problem. Because the benefit was tied to subsidised tube-well electricity rather than directly targeted according to need, larger farmers or those with greater groundwater dependence could receive a larger public benefit. The state was subsidising the cost of pumping water. Solarisation changes that arrangement. The government makes a substantial investment at the beginning, and the farmer takes over the cost of operating the system. That makes sense for the government; as for the farmers, it gives them something they had not reliably received from the grid: control over when they irrigate.
The question is who can afford to get there.
The farmer's share
While the government capped its contribution at Rs2 million per connection, real conversion costs ran significantly higher. Tariq Bangulzai, who farms 50 acres in Mastung, spent over Rs4 million to install his system which uses between 112 and 115 panels of 615 watts each.
With no dedicated bank financing available, growers were forced to sell livestock or rely on private high-interest loans to cover the shortfall, turning an energy relief programme into an immediate financial burden.
Mohammad Munawwar, an eight- to nine-acre apple grower from Khanozai, faced a similar problem. His solar system, including the panels, wiring, frame and other equipment, cost approximately Rs2.45 million.
The examples show why the solarisation programme cannot be judged only by how much money the government saves on electricity subsidies. For the government, the change converts a recurring expense into a capital investment. But for the farmer, it could mean taking on a large financial obligation immediately.
Zubair Khan argues that farmers who cannot meet the capital cost need affordable financing mechanisms, including concessional agricultural loans, long-term instalments, partial grants for smaller farmers and, where appropriate, cooperative or shared solar systems linked to efficient irrigation.
There is also a question about who is eligible in the first place. The programme is designed around registered subsidised agricultural tube-well consumers. Farmers who never had such a connection, including some who depend on diesel, do not automatically enter the same compensation arrangement. The transition therefore does not affect every farmer in the same way.
What solar gets right
While some farmers suffered during the transition, others are pleased with what happened after the solar system was installed. Munawwar says his orchard has not suffered from the change and that his main benefit is no longer having to depend on Qesco for irrigation power.
“I am very happy after shifting to solar,” he said. “At least now I do not have to protest against Qesco over electricity supply.”
This is a gripe that consumers in Pakistan have long held against the grid. For many, including the farmers in Balochistan, solar power is not just access to clean and cheap energy. It is also reliable daytime power, and in that sense an end to dependence on an expensive and unreliable grid. The problem is whether the state can move farmers from one irrigation system to another without leaving them exposed during the transition, without assuming that every farmer can finance the same capital cost and without ignoring what greater pumping capacity means for groundwater.
The experience of Naseerabad shows the first problem. Other parts of Balochistan point towards the third.
A falling water table
The falling groundwater is not primarily a Naseerabad issue. The province's most serious groundwater concerns are found in areas where agriculture depends heavily on aquifers, including parts of Pishin, Quetta, Mastung and Killa Abdullah.
In Dasht Kumbela, Bangulzai operates nine tube wells. Before solarisation, he said, the feeder serving his village supplied around 400 agricultural tube wells. There was not enough electricity for all of them to operate at the same time. Some farmers received electricity one day and others the next.
Solar changed that. It gave farmers greater pumping capacity during daylight hours. Bangulzai believes the change has added pressure to groundwater.
After heavy rains last year, he said, groundwater in his area was around 900 feet deep. During the following seven months, he estimated that 70 to 80 tube wells went dry as farmers drilled deeper.
He said drilling now costs around Rs4,500 per foot as farmers go deeper.
His concern extends beyond agriculture. He fears continued depletion could eventually threaten drinking water in his area.
His account does not prove that solarisation caused those wells to dry. Groundwater depletion in Mastung predates the solar programme and has several causes. But the economic mechanism, however, is simple to follow: When electricity is scarce or expensive, pumping is constrained. When solar makes daytime pumping cheaper and more readily available, that constraint weakens.
Dr Najeeb Ullah, a lecturer in the Department of Geology at the University of Balochistan, describes groundwater depletion as one of northern Balochistan's most serious environmental threats. His research indicates that groundwater levels in parts of the Pishin Basin are declining by around two to five metres annually. Kuchlak and Quetta sub-basins have also experienced excessive extraction accompanied by significant land subsidence.
He estimates that the Quetta Valley is subsiding at around 16 centimetres a year. “Solarisation is a factor, but it becomes dangerous when groundwater extraction remains unchecked,” he said. That is where the policy question moves beyond solar. A tube well does not care whether its pump is powered by electricity, diesel or sunlight. The question is how much water it is allowed to extract.
The missing regulation
Irrigation Secretary Sohail-ur-Rehman Baloch says there is currently no province-wide statutory limit on the number of hours a solar agricultural tube well can operate, and no uniform volumetric extraction limit for every solar tube well.
He says any restrictions should take account of crop requirements, aquifer safe yield, groundwater availability, pump capacity and local groundwater stress.
That approach makes more sense for Balochistan than a single province-wide quota on extraction, if only because the groundwater conditions of Naseerabad are not the same as those of Pishin, Quetta or Mastung.
The province already has a groundwater-management framework and a system for monitoring groundwater resources. But monitoring a falling water table is different from controlling the pumping that is causing it.
The 2025 Agricultural Solarisation and Electricity Theft Prevention Act regulates the solarisation process, including the use of government-supported solar facilities and restrictions on unauthorised reconnection to the grid. It does not establish a province-wide limit on pumping hours or a uniform groundwater extraction quota.
Solarisation is, therefore, changing the energy economics of irrigation faster than the province has established a comprehensive system for managing the water being pumped.
Governments elsewhere have encountered the same problem. India's experience with solar irrigation has increasingly focused on creating incentives for farmers to use less electricity and water rather than simply making pumping cheaper. In Gujarat, for example, grid-connected solar pumps have been linked to arrangements under which farmers can sell surplus electricity. National programmes have also incorporated groundwater-stress considerations and promoted efficient irrigation.
The policy lesson is useful for Balochistan. The answer is not to restrict solar because the need for cheap and clean energy transition is an immediate universal need, more so in Pakistan where energy poverty is widespread.
For experts the answer lies in regulating what happens after the solar panels are installed. That could mean monitoring groundwater levels, registering abstraction points, measuring water use, encouraging efficient irrigation and imposing restrictions in aquifers where extraction exceeds safe yield.
Sohail-ur-Rehman Baloch says High-Efficiency Irrigation Systems have been proposed as part of the response, but they are not currently a statutory requirement for every solarised tube well.
The Balochistan Water Policy 2024 also envisages further institutional and legal reforms.
The issue, then, is not whether solar power should be used for irrigation. It is whether the government will build the water rules around the new energy system.
Back to the field
In Naseerabad, Manjhoo's tube well now operates on solar power, and the immediate crisis of transition has passed. "Grid electricity was often unavailable or switched off by the authorities," he said. "From that perspective, solarisation has been very good for farmers."
The state had legitimate reason to end an expensive, failing electricity subsidy, just as farmers had reason to demand reliable power. Solar delivers that power while easing financial strain on Qesco. But an energy transition cannot come at the expense of basic agricultural survival. Crops need water when they need water; solar systems must be operational before grid connections are cut.
Moving forward, the success of Balochistan’s solarisation plan will not be measured by installed panels or removed subsidies. It will depend on whether the state can provide accessible financing for smallholders and enforce groundwater rules to keep cheap energy from draining depleted aquifers.
For the government, the calculation was about offloading an expensive electricity subsidy. For farmers, it has always been about water.