The Irony of Rahul Gandhi's speech in Parliament

I wonder how many of us were struck by the irony of the great grandson of the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, admitting before Parliament this week that there were still very many homes without a light bulb in this country 61 years after Independence.

The irony is that his father, his grandmother and his great grandfather ruled India for most of those 61 years. To me it was an admission of the failure of the dynasty and the party that has ruled India for six decades to deliver on its promises.

And this is a party whose Prime Minister told the Bucharest conference in 1976 that “development is the best contraceptive”. One of its family planning ministers told Parliament in the ’70s that “when a village is lit up, the birth rate falls.”

The National Electricity Policy (NEP), 2005 recognizes electricity as a “basic human need” and has set a goal of ‘electricity for all by 2012’, with a ‘minimum lifeline consumption of 1 kWh/household/day’. This would mean increasing per capita availability of electricity from 631 units to 1,000 units per annum.

But we are a long, long way from ensuring a light bulb in every home, nuclear energy or no nuclear energy, despite the goal of electricity for all by 2012.

Half the 220 million households in India do not have access to electricity. As of March 2007, the government has been able to provide power to less than a third of the 125,000 targeted villages under the Bharat Nirman – India Renewal – programme.

Electrification of villages does not mean that all rural households will get electricity – a village is declared electrified if 10% or more of households get electricity! Only eight of the 26 states – Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Maharashtra and Goa, Punjab and Haryana, and Nagaland have achieved 100% electrification as per this definition.

That means 90% of the rural households in these states could still be without electricity. Is it a surprise then that 18% per cent of those in urban areas and 39% of those in rural areas are still illiterate?

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, told the McKinsey Quarterly (Nov 2007) that India’s performance in power over the past several years is “the weakest”.

But he sought to lay the blame on the states as “most of the critical actions lie in the hands of state governments”. The Central government has now put in place the appropriate legal and regulatory framework to get the states to act But “performance, is lagging behind,” he admitted.

Today’s papers report that the situation is not just alarming, it’s scary even in the IT and financial capitals, Bangalore and Mumbai, respectively.

In Mumbai, unable to cope with outages, the MSEB has increased load shedding in certain industrial areas to a whopping 40 hours at a stretch. Electricity shortfall in Maharashtra has crossed 5,000 MW. Rural areas in Maharashtra have a nightmarish 13-hour power cut a day. Many towns will not have streetlights till 8 p.m. and possibly even beyond.

The political heart of India, Uttar Pradesh, fares no better with a shortage of 2,000MW per day against the demand of 8,500 MW per day. To bridge this gap, bigger towns and cities face up to eight hours of load shedding, district headquarters at least 10 hours and villages a staggering 16 hours.

The booming IT hub of Hyderabad has witnessed its first power cuts in more than 10 years. The government plans a two-day power holiday every week to tide over the crisis! And yet we claim to be a superpower and entertained the nation to two days of debate about whether India should sign the deal with the US on nuclear power or not.

Chinese Premier Chou En-Lai used to say, “What difference does it make if a cat is black or white so long as it catches mice!” Perhaps Mr Prakash Karat and his new found friends in the BJP and the BSP (both are strong believers in caste, each at extreme ends of the caste spectrum!) should go back to reading the speeches of Chou and Mao. ###