electrification from 74% to 91%. Around

1.75 crore, largely BPL rural households, have been given connections, raising the level of rural household electrification from 44% to 56%. An amount of Rs 25,335 crore has been released as subsidy and loan. There are 1.1 lakh franchisees covering 19% of the total villages.

Progress in household electrification includes that of BPL and APL households. As against the targets of 2.34 crore BPL and

5.46 crore APL rural households, there is a significant progress with the BPL households, with 68% of the target met. Progress with APL household electrification is very slow with only 2.68% of the target met. The number of APL household connections is surprisingly reported as zero in most states.

A Public Interest Critique

A programme of such massive scale, implemented in a vast country like India, can be expected to have many shortcomings. The objective of this critique is not to run down the programme. This public interest critique is based on a long-term, pro-poor perspective. It looks at three broad areas of RGGVY – planning, implementation and sustainable operation.

Planning: There have been many limitations in the planning process, which have subsequently resulted in implementation and sustainability issues.

The emphasis on top-down planning implied that RGGVY was designed at the central government level, largely by the MoP and Rural Electrification Corporation (REC). There was a broad-brush approach and mission mode ambitious target-driven implementation schedules. To cite a few examples: there were uniform estimates for village or household electrification, a similar approach to franchisees across the country, and a same end target for universal access for all states. This, no doubt, helped get things moving, but has caused problems too.

All states were expected to prepare rural electrification plans within six

Economic Political Weekly

months of notification of the national

rural electrification policy in August

2006. There was a lot of delay in this with

the first ones notified in 2008. Even today

all state rural electrification plans are not

available in the public domain.

It should have been clear at the very beginning that an electrification programme to be executed across the country would require massive preparation – technical, management and institutional. While detailed technical specification for rural electrification had been prepared by REC, it has been reported that sufficient attention was not given to availability of person-power, contractors, material (poles, conductors, transformers, etc), land acquisition, availability of BPL lists, or strengthening distribution companies for the increased rural operation and maintenance burden.

It is sad to note the watering down of the commitments – of providing quality electricity supply to rural networks and of promoting economic activities. On rural supply, the RGGVY Office Memorandum (2005) makes a bold commitment of equal treatment for rural and urban households: “States must make adequate arrangements for supply of electricity and there should be no discrimination in the hours of supply between rural and urban households”. The RGGVY continuation order (2008) reduces this to six to eight hours of supply to be eligible for subsidy: “Guarantee by State Government for a minimum daily supply of 6-8 hours of electricity in the RGGVY network with the assurance of meeting any deficit in this context by supplying electricity at subsidised tariff as required under the Electricity Act, 2003”. On economic activities, the 2005 memo explicitly states that RGGVY infrastructure should support activities like agriculture, irrigation, small industry, khadi and village industry, cold chains, healthcare, education and IT to facilitate overall rural development, employment generation and poverty alleviation. This commitment is repeated in the 2006

a similar clause, but stated in a more general fashion: “REDB, VEI and DDG would indirectly facilitate power requirement of agriculture and other activities, etc” (emphasis added).

One would think that for a programme with high capital investment implemented all over the country, the quality monitoring mechanisms would be developed right at the beginning. The detailed quality monitoring system was developed only in 2008 and an enquiry for National Quality Monitors was issued by the MoP only in 2009. This quality monitoring mechanism, involving the implementation agency, REC and the MoP, is also far removed from the field of action.

It is to be noted that RGGVY has resulted in a high push for grid electricity as the only solution for electrification, perhaps at the cost of neglecting stand-alone and grid interactive systems. While it is true that grid extension has a significant role to play in rural electrification, an integrated approach with a mix of grid extension, grid interactive and off-grid systems to meet the rural electricity should be developed.

Implementation: RGGVY implementation has many challenges, some of them having roots in planning.

The number of agencies in RGGVY is indeed high – central government agencies like MoP and REC; central public sector units; state governments; distribution companies; quality monitors; state and district committees; panchayats; turnkey contractors; equipment suppliers, transporters and finally the consumers. Reports indicate that coordination across these agencies has been poor, leading to delays and problems.

The website of the RGGVY, inaugurated in May 2008 (three years after the programme started), provides a detailed status report up to the village level. This indeed has increased transparency, but it is not clear how close to field reality these reports are and how much they are used for monitoring.

Detailed reports by the third party, REC and national quality monitors, are not available for public review. There are no participatory public processes to monitor progress at the state level. Tariff

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Strengthening Quality Monitoring Mechanism to Ensure Quality Network:

Making the detailed third party quality monitoring reports public and improving the RGGVY website would increase accountability. Encouraging local community organisations to take up the social audit of the RGGVY scheme would put pressure on the implementation agencies to ensure quality of construction.3 State governments could take the lead in this along with distribution companies, enlisting support from district and village organisations as well as civil society groups. Local organisations, NGOs, gram panchayats, etc, should be trained and empowered to conduct social audits.

Organising Connection Drives: Since universal access is the target, it is essential that distribution companies take up proactive drives connecting all households within 100 metres of the power line, to ensure that all APL households also get electricity connection. This would also help reduce losses (due to illegal connections or theft), increase revenue and ensure better planning of distribution infrastructure.4

Improving Tariff Schemes for the Poor:

Every state should have a separate tariff category for the BPL households, and it should be ensured that all BPL households are covered. This category should have a low tariff (as indicated in the National Electricity Policy) and tariff should not have any fixed or the minimum charges, which often become a source of problems. The energy consumption limit for this category (typically 30 units/month in most states) could be reviewed and the inclusion in the BPL category decided based on annual, and not monthly consumption, which often causes problems during festivals or family events. Until the rural quality of supply and service improves, there is a strong case to have a low tariff for rural consumers, though this should not become an excuse

to never improve rural quality of supply and service.

Process and Policy Shifts

Adequate and Quality Power to RGGVY Network: Measures should be taken to ensure quality adequate power supply, especially during evening hours. It is important to reserve cheap generation capacity to serve the RGGVY network, especially in states where the consumer base has significantly grown. This could be cheap hydro power, unallocated central power or a dedicated ultra-mega power project. MoP could work with distribution companies for planning and implementation.

Consumer groups should be encouraged to monitor the quality of supply and service by using innovative devices which could automatically record the presence of power supply. Considering the shortages, load shedding protocols should be developed through participatory regulatory process, to make load shedding transparent and predictable. Metering and billing should be improved with the use of load limiters for small consumers (where the consumer is charged based on the connected load), photo-metering (where a photo of the meter is printed on the consumer bill) and third party audit of metering and billing systems. Long-term measures to improve the quality of supply and service include ensuring dedicated rural wings for distribution companies and implementing ideas like separation of agriculture feeders.

Governance Measures

State-Level Reviews of RGGVY: Even if the funds and expertise for construction are from the central government, the state distribution companies are expected to take over and maintain the network. Considering this, it is crucial that transparent reviews with scope for public participation are organised at the state level, preferably by the state electricity regulatory commissions. Prudence of investment and good outcome should be the interest of the MoP. The MoP could provide the required policy clarity and mandate to state regulatory commissions to initiate such reviews, which could cover the quantitative and qualitative progress, functioning of franchisees, issues of rural power

NEW

PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN

• Pranab Bardhan

supply, functioning on district committees, state coordination committee, etc. A forum of regulators could provide a framework for review.

National Review of RGGVY: Independent surveys and studies should be organised by MoP and the Planning Commission. These could cover the pattern of household connection, transaction costs for getting a connection (even when it is supposed to be free), cost per connection, causes of delays, electricity availability, use, impact, growth of small enterprises, comparative study of franchisees, etc. All these would help initiate corrective steps during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.

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