India nears power success, but millions still in the dark

Bloomberg

Prime Minister Narendra Modi stormed to victory in 2014 on pledges to improve the lives of Indians, including bringing power to every citizen.
Rural electrification became a cornerstone of the prime minister’s plan, which included connecting more than 18,000 villages by the end of this month. And with only a few left to be electrified, according to government data, that’s a target Modi’s administration looks set to meet.
But that will still keep almost 32 million homes in the dark: the government deems a village “electrified” if 10 percent of its households, as well as public places such as schools and health centers, are connected. As of last week, less than 8 percent of the newly electrified villages had all homes electrified, the data showed, leaving swaths of rural India without power, which can hinder economic growth, basic health care and education.
“Such vague definitions only create a false sense of achievement and take us further away from the ground reality of duration and quality of supply in these areas,” said Vivek Sharma, a director at CRISIL Infrastructure Advisory, based in Gurugram.
Though the village electrification target is nearly met, Modi’s government knows more is needed. Last year, it followed up with a $2.5 billion programme to provide power connections to nearly every household by the end of March 2019.
Government data showed India had electrified about 13 percent of the almost 36.8 million homes identified in October as needing power. To meet its next deadline, it has to accelerate its monthly pace by more than threefold, according to Bloomberg calculations. “I’m skeptical that the government would be able to electrify all the households by 2019. It’s going to take many more years after that,” said Johannes Urpelainen, a professor of energy at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
India has made significant strides in electrification since 2000. Electricity reached 82 percent of the population in 2016, up from 43 percent at the turn of century, according to the International Energy Agency. Of the one-quarter of the world’s population without electricity that year, about 239 million people were in India, it said.