Events
& Issues
New Delhi, 8 August 2018
Power For All
ELECTRIFYING CLAIM?
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
The Modi government’s
resolve to light up every home by December 2018 is no doubt commendable. At the
time the announcement was made, August 2015, available data showed that 18,452
villages were without power. Though work is said to be moving at a somewhat
fast pace, there is scepticism whether all households would eventually get
electricity and importantly for how many hours on an average daily basis.
In a country where
around 65 per cent of the 1.3 billion population lives in rural areas, electrifying
every home has proved somewhat of an onerous challenge. Among the reasons is the
dire state of the power distribution companies’ finances and rampant theft from
the grid. With the General election slated for next year, access to power would
predictably turn out to be a key issue for voters, among various other plans and
promises of the NDA coming under scrutiny.
In 2014, 270-odd
million Indians had no access to electricity, making them up as one third of
the world’s powerless. (Nigeria was second-highest with 75 million.) According
to World Bank data, access to electricity in India’s rural communities jumped
since 1990, when less than half had electricity, but more than a fifth of
non-city dwellers still were without power in 2016. This compares with 100 per cent
rural coverage in China and 99 per cent in neighbouring Pakistan.
Recall that in 2017,
the NDA government launched the Saubhagya
scheme, which promised to provide free electricity connections to households in
rural areas and also the urban poor by end of 2018. It further promised to
distribute LED lamps to newly electrified households, in the backdrop of a major
section of this population continuing to be dependent on kerosene lamps or
diesel generators given that there is no regular supply of power in their
electrified homes.
A visit to the Saubhagya website shows the break-up/percentage
of electrification carried out so far in each State. While Punjab, Gujarat, Andhra
Pradesh, Goa and Puducherry are reportedly “100 per cent” electrified, only “55-60
per cent” of households in Uttar Pradesh and around “50-55 per cent” in
Jharkhand are electrified. However, unofficial reports suggest that these
official figures are not quite realistic. This is so because the power supply
to these ‘electrified households’ is for not more than four hours or so on an
average.
It needs to be
mentioned here that the figures are based on the premise that a village is
considered electrified if 10 per cent of public places, schools, panchayats
offices and health centres have access to electricity. Thus, 100 per cent
electrification does not mean that all households have access to electricity.
In fact, as a power expert explained such vague definitions only create a false
sense of achievement and doesn’t spell out the ground reality of the quality of
supply in the areas.
In April-end, the
Modi government claimed that all of nearly 600,000 villages have now been given
electricity connection. While the government may have provided the power
infrastructure in villages, it is now left to households to seek a connection
and for the State authorities to supply at affordable costs. In fact, electrification
of villages and that of households are two different things and making the
latter a reality is indeed quite difficult. Such vague definitions, says an
expert only create a false sense of achievement and take us further away from
the ground reality of duration and quality of supply in these areas.
The seeds
of 100 per cent village electrification were sowed with the Deen Dayal Upadhyay
Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJUY), a scheme with a projected outlay of Rs 76,000
crore that Modi launched on July 25, 2015. Earlier the scheme, launched by the
UPA government was called Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. Apparently,
Modi drew inspiration from his tenure as Gujarat Chief Minister, wherein farm
and household feeders in rural areas were separated to assure 24x7 power supply
to households and also to the farmers.
Coming to the
question of power distribution, which indeed is a crucial challenge, it has
been observed that State DISCOMS (power distribution facilities) are forced to
sell power to consumers below cost, largely because that makes politicians
popular with voters. DISCOMS are consequently forced to borrow heavily to pay
power-generation companies, restricting their ability to expand services. Also,
they don’t get paid for about one-fifth of the power flowing through their
networks because of sloppy billing and revenue collection, poor wiring or
straight-up theft. Over the years, there has been a clear lack of will to
address these problems and while the government is trying to change it around, little
headway has been made till date.
Barring cities such
as Calcutta, Mumbai, Delhi, Agra, Surat and Ahmedabad where power distribution
is privatised, it is the State DISCOMS that buy power through long-term
purchase agreements with Central and State-owned generating stations, private
generators and the Power Exchange India Limited. It seems that large
transmission and distribution losses, corruption etc. are key issues that are
intrinsically related to providing electricity to every household.
For distributing
power to all, say even by 2019, DISCOMS need to become viable enabling them to
bear infrastructure costs such as build sub-stations, install feeders,
transformers and metres.etc. The investment cost may be recovered through
consumer tariffs over the next five-six years. Moreover, they have to focus on
promoting efficiency, optimum utilisation of generation and transmission
capacity, shifting of overhead lines underground, wherever possible, laying of
new feeder feeders and setting up of new distribution transformers. It must be
remembered that the onus has to be on the States with support and help from the
Centre, in effect the Power Ministry.
Even if we
look at ‘power for all’ or for that matter 50 per cent of all households within
its targeted timeframe, the government has still a long way to go in providing
this very essential infrastructure to the masses. If at all it is successful,
the generation of power to the villages would have a rippling positive effect
on the rural economy and subsequently could improve the incomes of the people. In
April, it has been claimed that all of nearly 600,000 villages have now been
given electricity connection.
The desired change in
the rural economy particularly may be seen in the coming years but to witness real
and complete transformation there is need for more dedicated efforts by the States
and the Centre. Importantly, electrification plans, especially for rural India need
to be ‘sustainable’ and ‘affordable’ for both households and governments. Will
this be a reality? ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News & Feature Alliance)
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