Rural Electrification

letter sent to the press on 10/05/06

While the Union Energy Minister, Mr Sushil Kumar Shinde's promise of electrifying all the villages in the country by the year 2009 (vide the report in your columns on the 9th instant), is most laudable, if he is going to be doing it by drawing thousands of kilometers of T & D lines across the length and breadth of the country, as has been the practice so far, all he is going to achieve is to land the rest of the country into deeper trouble. These rural T & D lines invariably come as a package with factors like unbridled theft, low power factor and consequent drop in efficiency, unmetered and consequently unchecked consumption, leading to huge losses for the service provider. And, by clubbing them together with city loads, as has been the practice followed by companies like BESCOM, to provide for cross-subsidies in the name of Socialism, it is helping neither the rural consumer nor his urban counterpart. And, very clearly, there is no future along that route.

Mr Shinde would therefore do well to look at stand-alone alternate energy projects in the rural areas, preferably in the private / co-op sector, funded with low-interest loans by the various developmental agencies.