India's war for power: Lights off, anger on

LET THERE BE LIGHT: Will power shortage spark civic unrest? Face the Nation debates.

            

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Keywords: Power, Summer

India may be a democracy but its people are powerless. Summer has just begun and there are power cuts across the country. With mercury rising, protests are taking place against power cuts in Delhi, Haryana and parts of UP.

There are 16-hour power cuts in Kanpur, the West Bengal Raj Bhavan voluntarily cuts electricity for an hour, an electricity substation in Gurgaon is attacked, staff beaten up and equipment smashed.

Face the Nation debates: Will power shortage spark civic unrest?

Shiv Sena Lok Sabha Member of Parliament and ex-Union power minister Suresh Prabhu, author and power expert Navroz Dubash along with People's Action President Sanjay Kaul joined CNN-IBN’s Sagarika Ghose to discuss the issue.

When asked who should be blamed for power shortage in the country, Suresh Prabhu replied, “We know the problem, we know the solution but unfortunately we don’t want to work on it. This is not something, which should really surprise us because this is something that has been really neglected,” he said, adding, “One of the real problems of the power sector is distribution and transmission because at that end power is not becoming a commercially viable enterprise. People are not adding more capacity. Now again we have shifted our focus to distribution and transmission, which I was trying to do when I was the minister from generation. We need to shift our focus back to generation because we need huge power - about 25,000 megawatts of power. But unless we fix the problem of distribution and transmission, the consumers are suffering because they are not getting good quality power. They don’t get uninterrupted power supply.”

“No, I am not saying generation should be ignored. But while looking at generation, we must look at really on a very focused manner on distribution and transmission,” Prabhu said if distribution has to be fixed instead of generation.

Navroz Dubash agreed with Prabhu saying what happens at distribution end affects generation.

“One problem is at the distribution end which is why it is hard to persuade companies to work on generation end. It is difficult for consumers to understand this but power is a long chain with distribution being just one of it. What happens at distribution end affects generation. Getting to your question, power is undoubtedly a political issue. Not just in the countryside but even in cities. In Delhi we have seen power becoming a political issue. Now specifically with farmers, the issue goes back in time a little bit in the late 70s when power began to be used to get votes."

Dubash also pointed out power was distributed free or as cheap to farmers and meters were no longer maintained. So without meters no one knew how much electricity was actually being used. Over time other people started stealing power that was allocated to farmers.

He also said that India was now in a situation where nobody knows how much actually goes to farmers and how much is being stolen. So we have to unwind a very complicated history and that is why power reforms are very difficult,” Dubash said.

When People's Action President Sanjay Kaul was asked shouldn’t residents of Delhi pay more for power, he did not agree.

“I think we are going way back into time. Today’s situation is different from it was five years back or 10 years back. I don’t one can generalise that people in Delhi steal power. In fact, I don’t believe that there is anything unique in power being a political issue. Water is a political issue, so are roads and so are public transports. The same situation is with water. Forty per cent of Delhi’s water is unaccounted for. Lets look at the distinction. Theft and unaccounted power does not mean that power is not required. That is why I also disagree with Mr Prabhu about the weightage he has given to distribution," he said.

Distribution is eventually an administrative affair, Kaul said. He pointed out that if you don’t have enough of it, somebody is going to exploit the situation. If you had enough of it, we could handle the administrative part of it. Suppose you handle the administrative part of it but you still don’t have the bread. The question is fundamental and it cannot be portioned out. We are talking about portions of a problem. The truth is this that political will has been consistently absence in the delivery of essential items.

“I am saying ‘if you do not have a commodity in enough measure, every thing else is secondary’. Invite the private sector,” Kaul added.

Prabhu, too, concurred with Kaul saying more power plants must be set up to mitigate the issue of power shortage.

“Obviously if you want to supply electricity, you will have to generate more. There is no doubt about it. There is no question about it. For example in telecommunication there is a huge investment and we have added huge capacity because we have as much supply as demand. Why it has happened is because there is huge profit that companies can make. Bharti unheard of 10-12 years back is now making millions of dollars of profit,” the Lok Sabha MP said.

Why do private players not want to come into power?.

“That’s right. Why there is no return on investment is because at the end of distribution when power is already generated, transmitted and distributed, at the end of it you collect the entire power bills. But at the end if you don’t recover after supplying to the consumer, then obviously you will make a loss. If you are putting in Rs 100 to generate and distribute electricity, at the end of the day you are getting just Rs 40,” Prabhu said.