India has four crore un-electrified rural households.
The year 2022, has been earmarked for achieving the target of “24x7 Power for All”.
Achieving this target would mean electrifying more than 7 lakh households every month!
Is the government on track?
Government has made steady progress in recent years.
Data from the power ministry suggest that the Government has electrified more than three-fourths of the remaining 18,000-plus unelectrified villages since it came to power in 2014.
Recently, the Government has also shifted focus from village electrification, which required only 10 per cent of the households in a village to be electrified, to electrifying every household.
What are some of the teething problems?
However, providing an electricity connection to every household does not guarantee electricity access.
Among the most energy deprived states, surveys have found that while most villages and more than two-thirds of the households had electricity connections, less than 40 per cent had meaningful access to electricity.
Many rural consumers were displeased with the poor power supply and cited reliability, quality, duration, and affordability as key concerns.
Success mainly depends on curbing discom losses and ensuring consumer honesty.
What could be the possible priorities areas in the future?
The first step towards the target would be to provide new connections to un-electrified households and legalising existing illegal connections.
Secondly, improving uptake of connections by addressing financial hurdles and awareness barriers is to be taken up.
Financial Issues - High upfront cost is the major reason behind consumer disinterest in taking up an electricity connection.
While BPL households already receive a free connection under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), APL families could be given a low-cost EMI based connection.
Awareness - Empowering and encouraging local authorities to organise awareness campaigns and enrolment camps in habitations exhibiting limited awareness are also essential.
Bihar has currently evolved a good model both awareness campaigns & subsidy for APL families.
Supply situation - Improving the supply situation for already electrified households is to be done.
In Bihar, Jharkhand and UP, more than one-third of electrified households received less than four hours of supply during the day and voltage fluctuations are also common.
DISCOMs need to better plan for their infrastructure, factoring in near-term increase in demand, strengthening maintenance, and improving supply.
Innovative Business - As managing rural customers, particularly in remote areas, is a challenge innovative business models need to be explored.
Maintenance and operations such as reading meters, generating bills, and collecting revenues, are key concerns.
To better manage their services, discoms could explore a franchisee model by collaborating with local mini-grid operators.
Distributed generation - Models like rooftop solar power could complement centralised grid electricity to ensure sustained use of electricity for the entire rural economy.
Such models need to be promoted.
It is hoped that electrification would lead to improved consumer satisfaction, as electricity truly becomes an enabler of prosperity in rural India.
