Painting by RAQIB SHAW, London-based Kashmiri painter
Unnecessary Shortage Psychosis In Netaland
In the Biblical vision, Adam and Eve frolic naked in the idyllic Garden of Eden in a state of innocence before the consumption of a certain Satanic apple cause them to develop a sense of “modesty”. Likewise, we behold the blameless beatitude of our politicians brandishing their stock excuses for a perennial shortage of bijli, pani, sadak etc..
Adam and Eve did take to bikinis and micro-briefs fashioned out of fig leaves once they developed the concept of shame, thanks to that devilish “apple of knowledge”; but this maturing has routinely eluded our netas, over all the years of their ascendancy.
Our politicians, feel no shame whatsoever when they sanctimoniously advise the public to save water and electricity, use one bucket to bathe instead of two, huddle under one fan and so on, while living in colonial splendour themselves. They even threaten punishment for those who have the temerity to “waste scarce water and electricity”.
And when confronted by ordinary people enduring ten-hour power cuts, year in and year out, they have the gall to blame the weather too. But then, they probably wouldn’t blink even if the Biblical serpent of all evil bit them in the eye.
But every politician does take the wily precaution of never naming the disease lest they find it to be contagious. So never, not even once, do they admit that their planning on practically every infrastructural matter has been hopelessly inadequate, and implementation, via a legion of unsackable babus, unspeakably abysmal.
Nor will they admit that this rank incompetence has been, is, and probably always will be, the biggest obstacle to the progress of India in the world.
Our politicians never talk of the sorry state of our electricity boards, the worn out and inadequate generation equipment labouring on from the thirties, when our population was a third of what it is, and the country itself was little more than a peasant-farming backwater.
They say nothing about the lack of updation over generations, the pathetic maintenance, the shocking break-down statistics, the underperformance, the corruption and unpaid bills, the transmission and distribution leakages, the absence of commissioning of new facilities. The tale is just too horrific for any self-preserving politician to take responsibility for.
But any progress made, however tardily, can be taken credit for though; with no mention of the losses endured, the inconvenience and suffering caused, the cost overruns, the growth blocked, the huge amount of work as yet undone.
.
But step away from Indian shores where God has apparently ordained that nothing should ever be simple and uncomplicated and proceed in a linear fashion; and you see transformations that seem to be using magic wands by comparison.
There is no earthly reason why India should be so woefully short of electricity when even thumb-nail sized countries such as Singapore, an insignificant flea-bitten promontory on the tip of the Malay peninsula before a visionary like former President Lee Kuan Yew took it in hand; does not have such a problem.
The Gulf nations, favoured by large reserves of oil in several instances, but little else, and subject to scorching hot weather around the year, are awash in desalinated water and blazing electricity.
They routinely generate surpluses from multiple power stations, each designed to deliver double or three times the wildest estimates of projected power requirements. These once Bedouin nations with the most rudimentary economic notions, are now busy building steel and glass Xanadus, inviting the Louvre to open branches amongst their date palms, greening the desert, and experimentally growing wheat therein!
The West, massively consumerist, borne out by the global “carbon emission” debate, are however, never short of electricity and water, items considered to be basic deliverables for any civilised nation.
But in India, the situation is grim and will remain dire for the foreseeable future. This is because of the sheer backlog. Future demand will perpetually outstrip supply, unless we drop our present assumptions and tackle electricity generation, transmission and distribution as a national imperative.
It would mean getting away from the endless obsession with containing unit costs of electricity and creating a glut instead, with its natural effect on prices going forward.
As things stand, we will be lucky to generate an additional 25 per cent of the 11th Plan (2007-2012), five-year target of 78,577 MW over the entire plan period. Meanwhile, the minimum shortfall in demand nationally is officially admitted to be 11 per cent but is closer to 20 per cent already.
In rural India, some 105,000 villages of the total 593,732 (17.8 per cent), still need to be electrified as of March 2008. The ones that have electricity endure “power cuts” of about 14 hours daily and uneven voltage to boot. Besides, there are also millions of people waiting for a power connection in the electrified towns, cities and villages.
Even the most favoured states in terms of electricity such as Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, largely devoid of industry, endure regular power outages.
Only 10,700 MW of the 11th Plan target capacity-addition (14 per cent of the total), is to come from the private sector, even though the Government has never managed to deliver on its power plans.
And we seem unable to speed up efficiencies on our existing and proposed coal-based plants. Coal is appropriate, because we do have an abundance of low quality coal.
Today this is no “smoke stack” style disadvantage because coal can now be scrubbed of pollutants, even liquefied. But mining it, getting it to the power plants on time, controlling the coal mafias and loutish unions etc. remain intractable issues that call for firm handling.
And, even after winning through a hornet’s nest of political noise, we are still proceeding at a snail’s pace on implementing the possibilities made available by the Civil Nuclear Power Agreement signed with the US and the NSG (Nuclear Supplier’s Group) in 2008.
We need to approach these basic, enabling, issues with a sense of strategic urgency. There will be no double-digit growth without it. If we cannot build political consensus on something so self-evident, then the case for draconian provisions under the constitution should be invoked in the national interest. Either way, it calls for a different type of accountable netagiri beyond the blatant hypocrisy and obtuseness on display at present.
(1,051 words)
30th June 2009
Gautam Mukherjee
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