16 ms·

India unveils $2.5B plan to electrify all households by end 2018

244 points by bandrami 9y ago

ppurka 9y ago
I guess the promise is (also practically possible) to have electrical _connection_ to all households. It's a different question whether there will be, or can be, steady electricity supply, given how the electricity distribution is currently managed. Regarding providing free electricity - this can be a good thing as long as the electricity consumption is free up to an amount limited by the size of the house and household. This is very susceptible to abuse.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
abhi3 9y ago
October last year: “Piyush Goyal assures electricity for all by May 2017” http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/piyush-goyal-assures-electricity-for-all-by-may-2017/411440/ http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/piyush-goyal-assu... September 2017: Government announces grand new scheme to ensure electricity for all by 2018!! Talk about shifting goal posts.
thewhitetulip 9y ago
It's highly ironic that the ruling party is now receding to the level of the previous govt that they destroyed in the 2014 elections. The UPA also used to offer free things to poor and used to do minority appeasement two years before the elections. The thing is, this govt came to power in all but 4 Indian states and it has just destroyed the economy. The GDP rate has skid down to 4% just as the previous PM, Dr Manmohan Singh said it would and at that time, everyone mocked him. Guess who is laughing now? The current govt has failed absolutely at every way, the Demonetization exercise was a total and epic disaster and it shocked the economy without fulfilling it's motive of "war on black money" as 99% of the invalid notes were returned to the RBI. But that's not the only problem, the problem is, this govt takes decisions just to win elections. DeMo happened just before UP elections after the "surgical strike" lost it's glitter in the media. Even the most ardent supporters of the current govt are asking the question, if the earlier govt was able to keep the GDP growth rate above 7 in horrible world economic condition, why is the current govt unable to do so even when the crude oil prices are half of what it was earlier?
- harigov 9y ago
  Minor correction. They are NOT offering free electricity. Just free electric connections. Consumers have to pay the monthly bill on their own. Also, GDP growth under previous govt was accompanied by a significant increase in inflation and govt debt so it is not exactly apples-to-apples comparison.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  It was toilets for all last time, right? Edit: Oh right, thanks for the reminder. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan#Histor...
  - unmole 9y ago
    You mean UPA's Nirmal Bharat campaign which Modiji rebranded as Swach Bharat?
    - virtuabhi 9y ago
      Yes, and all the new poverty alleviation schemes are just rebranding of Garibi Hatao of 1970s, right?
      - unmole 9y ago
        In the government's own words, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was Restructured into Swach Bharat Mission.[0] [0]: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=109988 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=109988
      - ahamedirshad123 9y ago
        Not only this. He is befooling Indians again by launching an old scheme as new. http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/durbhagya-saubhagya-yojana/151497/ http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/durbhagya-saubhagya-yoj... http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/repackaged-previous-upa-schemes/149987/ http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/repackaged-previous-upa...
snowwindwaves 9y ago
Utility scale solar makes sense since they usually build it in sunny places, solar panels on your house are great if they will pay themselves off (you live in a sunny place with expensive electricity you get to avoid buying or you get a subsidy) but I think residential battery systems are not currently sensible if you have a grid connection. If the purpose of the battery is for when the power goes out just get a little gas or diesel powered generator. The article notes the perfect application of solar plus battery; places with no utility connection and the only initial loads will be LED lights and the users will not be accustomed to toasters, air conditioning, etc "The pledge to provide power could face challenges as it remains difficult to provide electricity in remote towns and villages. The government said it would distribute solar power packs with a battery bank to un-electrified households in such areas."
- jon_richards 9y ago
  Battery systems still make sense on the Indian grid if they can replace backup generators.
  - snowwindwaves 9y ago
    Not yet. Backup generators have lifespans in decades and cost less than $1000 per kW of power with energy only limited by fuel. What will the batteries be charged by when some huge storm makes it cloudy and rainy for days? Batteries as a backup power source sound great until you have to depend on them and they run out. Batteries plus solar to run some led lights where there is no utility makes perfect sense though.
    - Brakenshire 9y ago
      I wonder what the state of technology is for this yet. Most existing battery and solar installations can't be used when a blackout occurs, to protect the safety of workers rapairing lines. Seems like a bit more work needs to occur to be able to isolate the house from the grid, and then run the house system in isolation.
pkaye 9y ago
Is $2.5B enough to do all that?
- piyush_soni 9y ago
  Yes, I mean the villages are only "electrified" on paper, and that means there is now a new pillar in the village that gets electricity connection. Many of the houses still don't really get it actually.
- madmax108 9y ago
  Yes $2.5B is enough for multiple waves of nationwide ad campaigns promoting the government's decision to electrify the whole country (which BTW has been part of every manifesto, directly or indirectly, for the past 15 years). Sadly, the ruling government is more of a self-marketing machine than a provider for growth, economically or otherwise. On the ground changes are few and far in between. The focus is more on providing positive spins on disastrous decisions and a society degenerating to medieval levels in some parts of the country (diseases that are exterminated in most of the world, extreme poverty, agriculture purely dependent on monsoons which are themselves flaky, religious atrocities). As long as the 2019 elections are won (which is the only thing that matters) the ruling government will feel the $2.5B spent is worthwhile even if a single house does not get electricity (and then expect a positive spin saying we have the electrical capacity, and what we promised was to prove that we have the capacity, not actually provide everyone electricity) (Sadly, even HN has it's set of right wing trolls, so expecting some pro-Modi comments, or more whataboutery on this comment as well!) Edit: And here we go with the shifting goalposts again: https://twitter.com/AisiTaisiDemo/status/912542412882374657 https://twitter.com/AisiTaisiDemo/status/912542412882374657
  - balladeer 9y ago
    > Yes $2.5B is enough for multiple waves of nationwide ad campaigns This is accurate. I am not talking about the figure. I think more money would be required for the ad campaigns and few "pilot" projects or releases for the follow up ad campaigns. I am talking about madmax108 being accurate in stating the sole intention of the Govt and how things have been done here before this Govt and how this Govt has acted in last 3 years and how they are indicating they will act.
api 9y ago
In America that would be the cost of one gas turbine.
- CHsurfer 9y ago
  Actually, you can get about four single shaft combined cycle plants with a fairly large class GT. $2.5b seems rediculousely small for the task at hand, assuming that they will want to have power flowing to all of those newly connected households.
  - arsalanb 9y ago
    When you have engineers working for roughly 1/10th the salary, that's what you get.
    - th1nkdifferent 9y ago
      Of course. Because the salary is the major cost?
ForFreedom 9y ago
The question is will the govt have money for all these projects? The bullet train which is a loan from Japan for 50 years at 0.1% additionally permitting Japan in on Indians infra development.
sifar 9y ago
There is a difference in providing an "electric connection" to each household and providing electricity to the household.I live in a relatively well-off locality and don't have electricity for at least 30 days/year. During monsoons, have to go without electricity for 48 hrs even. Providing off-grid solar electricity to remote locations is the right way to go. But that is only part of the equation, one has to ensure regular maintenance and battery replacement, especially since these areas will have adverse conditions. It is like the swachh bharat mission, toilets were built for sanitation in villages but they were useless since they didn't have water. Sadly no one gives a thought to this in India, things are built and are useless or they wither in short time due to lack of maintenance. This is another propaganda BS by the government. BJP will have to upgrade their techniques, otherwise the mountain of propaganda that they have built will cave in on themselves.
- ahamedirshad123 9y ago
  >BJP will have to upgrade their techniques, otherwise the mountain of propaganda that they have built will cave in on themselves. It has already started.
farhanhubble 9y ago
I live in Delhi and during peek summer time (April to June) 3-4 hour power cuts are routine, sometimes due to load shedding and sometimes due to faults. But that's not the horrible part since we have battery backup (known as Inverters) that can provide power for 6-8 hours. The horrible part is that during nighttime the voltage goes as low as 160 volts and the frequency drops too, as a result most critical cooling devices like fridges and ACs don't function at all. As more and more people in a locality install voltage regulators or stabilizers, they draw large currents and trip the transformers, sometimes dozens of times in an hour. I've also spent several years in tier two cities, where 8-10 hour power cuts are part of normal life and smaller towns where a failure can cause week-long power cut. I know with surety that large parts of the National Capital Region (NCR) have massive power cuts. Housing societies and businesses run large diesel generators charging 3-4x the normal rate and causing immense pollution. This is only half the story, the story of low power supply. Then there is power theft. I don't have exact figures but when I used to go to the billing office for paying our meager bill of a few hundred rupees, I saw pending bills of hundred of thousands rupees. People hadn't paid their bills for decades. Occasionally there would be raids and the defaulters' power would be disconnected, then they would hook up to the power lines illegally for some time and then get the connections back under some amnesty scheme. It remains to be seen where the power to 'electrify' all households come from and who'll actually foot the bill for the 'free' connections and the lifetime free electricity.
- helloindia 9y ago
  All Indians know that free things by govt can only be bought by bribing officials.
- PietdeVries 9y ago
  More than 40 million households - about a quarter of all in the country - are yet to be electrified and about 300 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are still not hooked up to the grid. Soo.... The article suggests that there are roughly 4x40 million = 160 million households in the country, and 1.3 billion people. Divide the one by the other and you get an estimate for the household size of roughly 10 people. That seems rather larger to me, also given the fact that large IT cities like Bangalore are growing like crazy - all with one or two people in an appartment, not 10. Next, getting 40 million households hooked up to the electricity network for 2.5 billion dollar. Dividing again gives 2500 dollar per 40 households or 60 dollar per house. While labor is cheap in India - this is not going to work. And indeed: 40 million more housholds (or 300 million more Indians with access to electricity) is not going to do the networks much good...
ahamedirshad123 9y ago
More cess then.
ahamedirshad123 9y ago
And Don't forget this http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/On-paper-electrified-villages-%E2%80%94-in-reality-darkness/article14176223.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/On-paper-electrified-v...
taherchhabra 9y ago
Because elections are coming in 2019 and $2.5B is lesser than the marketing budget of the ruling party
ordbajsare 9y ago
India is an corrupt socialist hellhole.
jacquesm 9y ago
The most sketchy back of the envelope calculations would indicate that the 2.5B is off by at least an order of magnitude. In other words, this is a nice press release but it won work for that money and it definitely will not work within the next 15 months. But it sure looks good in theory.
MrsPeaches 9y ago
The biggest issue I experienced in India was that there are a lot of government schemes aimed at the rural poor and yet the people at whom the schemes are aimed often struggle to access them. One such scheme I personally saw people struggle to access was NREGA[1]. A social workers job in India is pretty much just going around and helping people fill out the correct forms. In many rural area there are people who sit outside of banks who's soul job is to fill out forms for those who cannot read or write. One of the big challenges will just be telling people that they have access to such a scheme and helping them fill out the correct forms to access it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005#The_law_in_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...
vthallam 9y ago
It's kinda weird that people here focus on how there are power cuts for existing users, how this govt wants to give away free things etc. All this move guarantees is that the people who never officially had a power connection get one. This might well be a marketing scheme, but as long as they deliver, we are good. It's kinda ridiculous that a Prime Minister i 2017 have to make a plan to get everyone power. How difficult was this for the previous govt?
- thro1237 9y ago
  This is just a renaming of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyothi yojana launched by the same government in 2015, which itself was a renaming of Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) launched by the previous government. Yes, one can rename one's own scheme and get another round of press coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deen_Dayal_Upadhyaya_Gram_Jyoti_Yojana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deen_Dayal_Upadhyaya_Gram_Jyot...
t1o5 9y ago
An exception in India, a small state called Kerala which has achieved 100% electrification recently. This do not mean there are power outages and voltage problems. This is among many other socio economic achievements which makes it stands out when compared to other states in India. It has achieved these feats through a model of development which is now called "Kerala model". Kerala model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-is-now-totally-electrified/article18618774.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-is-now-t... About Kerala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala
mitul_45 9y ago
I don't know how but somehow power cut hasn't been a thing in my hometown - Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Maybe privatization has helped. Torrent Power has completed its acquisition of the Ahmedabad Electricity Company in 1997 [1]. And since then there hasn't been single power cut longer than 15 minutes which I can remember. Same goes for Surat now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_Power.
mezuzi 9y ago
Is it a plan or just some Modi propaganda?! 1.3, this is not Slovenia or Cameroon, it's a 1.3 billion population.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
nebula 9y ago
A good analysis of the plan and what it takes to implement it successfully: https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/before-those-bulbs-are-switched-on-what-it-will-take-to-make-saubhagya-a-success https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/before-those-bulbs-ar...
anuraj 9y ago
Nothing New - This programme was originally called RAJIV GANDHI GRAMEEN VIDYUTIKARAN YOJANA (RGGVY) (2004-2017) to electrify all villages. During this period only Kerala achieved 100% electrification to all households. This is old wine in new bottle. More window dressing for a country that is facing unprecedented economic slowdown and job losses.
pankajdoharey 9y ago
$2.5 Billion for that many houses seem too low. I think the budget may have to be increased. In any case we would know this by 2018 anyway.
m3kw9 9y ago
Most times I wouldn’t believe, but they proved they could do it from the success so far with the toilet project

244 points by bandrami 9y ago

I guess the promise is (also practically possible) to have electrical _connection_ to all households. It's a different question whether there will be, or can be, steady electricity supply, given how the electricity distribution is currently managed. Regarding providing free electricity - this can be a good thing as long as the electricity consumption is free up to an amount limited by the size of the house and household. This is very susceptible to abuse.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

abhi3 9y ago

October last year: “Piyush Goyal assures electricity for all by May 2017” http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/piyush-goyal-assures-electricity-for-all-by-may-2017/411440/ http://www.financialexpress.com/india-news/piyush-goyal-assu... September 2017: Government announces grand new scheme to ensure electricity for all by 2018!! Talk about shifting goal posts.

thewhitetulip 9y ago

It's highly ironic that the ruling party is now receding to the level of the previous govt that they destroyed in the 2014 elections. The UPA also used to offer free things to poor and used to do minority appeasement two years before the elections. The thing is, this govt came to power in all but 4 Indian states and it has just destroyed the economy. The GDP rate has skid down to 4% just as the previous PM, Dr Manmohan Singh said it would and at that time, everyone mocked him. Guess who is laughing now? The current govt has failed absolutely at every way, the Demonetization exercise was a total and epic disaster and it shocked the economy without fulfilling it's motive of "war on black money" as 99% of the invalid notes were returned to the RBI. But that's not the only problem, the problem is, this govt takes decisions just to win elections. DeMo happened just before UP elections after the "surgical strike" lost it's glitter in the media. Even the most ardent supporters of the current govt are asking the question, if the earlier govt was able to keep the GDP growth rate above 7 in horrible world economic condition, why is the current govt unable to do so even when the crude oil prices are half of what it was earlier?

harigov 9y ago
Minor correction. They are NOT offering free electricity. Just free electric connections. Consumers have to pay the monthly bill on their own. Also, GDP growth under previous govt was accompanied by a significant increase in inflation and govt debt so it is not exactly apples-to-apples comparison.
QAPereo 9y ago
It was toilets for all last time, right? Edit: Oh right, thanks for the reminder. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan#History https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swachh_Bharat_Abhiyan#Histor...
- unmole 9y ago
  You mean UPA's Nirmal Bharat campaign which Modiji rebranded as Swach Bharat?
  - virtuabhi 9y ago
    Yes, and all the new poverty alleviation schemes are just rebranding of Garibi Hatao of 1970s, right?
    - unmole 9y ago
      In the government's own words, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was Restructured into Swach Bharat Mission.[0] [0]: http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=109988 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=109988
    - ahamedirshad123 9y ago
      Not only this. He is befooling Indians again by launching an old scheme as new. http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/durbhagya-saubhagya-yojana/151497/ http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/durbhagya-saubhagya-yoj... http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/repackaged-previous-upa-schemes/149987/ http://www.jantakareporter.com/india/repackaged-previous-upa...

snowwindwaves 9y ago

Utility scale solar makes sense since they usually build it in sunny places, solar panels on your house are great if they will pay themselves off (you live in a sunny place with expensive electricity you get to avoid buying or you get a subsidy) but I think residential battery systems are not currently sensible if you have a grid connection. If the purpose of the battery is for when the power goes out just get a little gas or diesel powered generator. The article notes the perfect application of solar plus battery; places with no utility connection and the only initial loads will be LED lights and the users will not be accustomed to toasters, air conditioning, etc "The pledge to provide power could face challenges as it remains difficult to provide electricity in remote towns and villages. The government said it would distribute solar power packs with a battery bank to un-electrified households in such areas."

jon_richards 9y ago
Battery systems still make sense on the Indian grid if they can replace backup generators.
- snowwindwaves 9y ago
  Not yet. Backup generators have lifespans in decades and cost less than $1000 per kW of power with energy only limited by fuel. What will the batteries be charged by when some huge storm makes it cloudy and rainy for days? Batteries as a backup power source sound great until you have to depend on them and they run out. Batteries plus solar to run some led lights where there is no utility makes perfect sense though.
  - Brakenshire 9y ago
    I wonder what the state of technology is for this yet. Most existing battery and solar installations can't be used when a blackout occurs, to protect the safety of workers rapairing lines. Seems like a bit more work needs to occur to be able to isolate the house from the grid, and then run the house system in isolation.

pkaye 9y ago

Is $2.5B enough to do all that?

piyush_soni 9y ago
Yes, I mean the villages are only "electrified" on paper, and that means there is now a new pillar in the village that gets electricity connection. Many of the houses still don't really get it actually.
madmax108 9y ago
Yes $2.5B is enough for multiple waves of nationwide ad campaigns promoting the government's decision to electrify the whole country (which BTW has been part of every manifesto, directly or indirectly, for the past 15 years). Sadly, the ruling government is more of a self-marketing machine than a provider for growth, economically or otherwise. On the ground changes are few and far in between. The focus is more on providing positive spins on disastrous decisions and a society degenerating to medieval levels in some parts of the country (diseases that are exterminated in most of the world, extreme poverty, agriculture purely dependent on monsoons which are themselves flaky, religious atrocities). As long as the 2019 elections are won (which is the only thing that matters) the ruling government will feel the $2.5B spent is worthwhile even if a single house does not get electricity (and then expect a positive spin saying we have the electrical capacity, and what we promised was to prove that we have the capacity, not actually provide everyone electricity) (Sadly, even HN has it's set of right wing trolls, so expecting some pro-Modi comments, or more whataboutery on this comment as well!) Edit: And here we go with the shifting goalposts again: https://twitter.com/AisiTaisiDemo/status/912542412882374657 https://twitter.com/AisiTaisiDemo/status/912542412882374657
- balladeer 9y ago
  > Yes $2.5B is enough for multiple waves of nationwide ad campaigns This is accurate. I am not talking about the figure. I think more money would be required for the ad campaigns and few "pilot" projects or releases for the follow up ad campaigns. I am talking about madmax108 being accurate in stating the sole intention of the Govt and how things have been done here before this Govt and how this Govt has acted in last 3 years and how they are indicating they will act.

api 9y ago

In America that would be the cost of one gas turbine.

CHsurfer 9y ago
Actually, you can get about four single shaft combined cycle plants with a fairly large class GT. $2.5b seems rediculousely small for the task at hand, assuming that they will want to have power flowing to all of those newly connected households.
- arsalanb 9y ago
  When you have engineers working for roughly 1/10th the salary, that's what you get.
  - th1nkdifferent 9y ago
    Of course. Because the salary is the major cost?

ForFreedom 9y ago

The question is will the govt have money for all these projects? The bullet train which is a loan from Japan for 50 years at 0.1% additionally permitting Japan in on Indians infra development.

sifar 9y ago

There is a difference in providing an "electric connection" to each household and providing electricity to the household.I live in a relatively well-off locality and don't have electricity for at least 30 days/year. During monsoons, have to go without electricity for 48 hrs even. Providing off-grid solar electricity to remote locations is the right way to go. But that is only part of the equation, one has to ensure regular maintenance and battery replacement, especially since these areas will have adverse conditions. It is like the swachh bharat mission, toilets were built for sanitation in villages but they were useless since they didn't have water. Sadly no one gives a thought to this in India, things are built and are useless or they wither in short time due to lack of maintenance. This is another propaganda BS by the government. BJP will have to upgrade their techniques, otherwise the mountain of propaganda that they have built will cave in on themselves.

ahamedirshad123 9y ago
>BJP will have to upgrade their techniques, otherwise the mountain of propaganda that they have built will cave in on themselves. It has already started.

farhanhubble 9y ago

I live in Delhi and during peek summer time (April to June) 3-4 hour power cuts are routine, sometimes due to load shedding and sometimes due to faults. But that's not the horrible part since we have battery backup (known as Inverters) that can provide power for 6-8 hours. The horrible part is that during nighttime the voltage goes as low as 160 volts and the frequency drops too, as a result most critical cooling devices like fridges and ACs don't function at all. As more and more people in a locality install voltage regulators or stabilizers, they draw large currents and trip the transformers, sometimes dozens of times in an hour. I've also spent several years in tier two cities, where 8-10 hour power cuts are part of normal life and smaller towns where a failure can cause week-long power cut. I know with surety that large parts of the National Capital Region (NCR) have massive power cuts. Housing societies and businesses run large diesel generators charging 3-4x the normal rate and causing immense pollution. This is only half the story, the story of low power supply. Then there is power theft. I don't have exact figures but when I used to go to the billing office for paying our meager bill of a few hundred rupees, I saw pending bills of hundred of thousands rupees. People hadn't paid their bills for decades. Occasionally there would be raids and the defaulters' power would be disconnected, then they would hook up to the power lines illegally for some time and then get the connections back under some amnesty scheme. It remains to be seen where the power to 'electrify' all households come from and who'll actually foot the bill for the 'free' connections and the lifetime free electricity.

helloindia 9y ago
All Indians know that free things by govt can only be bought by bribing officials.
PietdeVries 9y ago
More than 40 million households - about a quarter of all in the country - are yet to be electrified and about 300 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are still not hooked up to the grid. Soo.... The article suggests that there are roughly 4x40 million = 160 million households in the country, and 1.3 billion people. Divide the one by the other and you get an estimate for the household size of roughly 10 people. That seems rather larger to me, also given the fact that large IT cities like Bangalore are growing like crazy - all with one or two people in an appartment, not 10. Next, getting 40 million households hooked up to the electricity network for 2.5 billion dollar. Dividing again gives 2500 dollar per 40 households or 60 dollar per house. While labor is cheap in India - this is not going to work. And indeed: 40 million more housholds (or 300 million more Indians with access to electricity) is not going to do the networks much good...

ahamedirshad123 9y ago

More cess then.

ahamedirshad123 9y ago

And Don't forget this http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/On-paper-electrified-villages-%E2%80%94-in-reality-darkness/article14176223.ece http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/On-paper-electrified-v...

taherchhabra 9y ago

Because elections are coming in 2019 and $2.5B is lesser than the marketing budget of the ruling party

ordbajsare 9y ago

India is an corrupt socialist hellhole.

jacquesm 9y ago

The most sketchy back of the envelope calculations would indicate that the 2.5B is off by at least an order of magnitude. In other words, this is a nice press release but it won work for that money and it definitely will not work within the next 15 months. But it sure looks good in theory.

MrsPeaches 9y ago

The biggest issue I experienced in India was that there are a lot of government schemes aimed at the rural poor and yet the people at whom the schemes are aimed often struggle to access them. One such scheme I personally saw people struggle to access was NREGA[1]. A social workers job in India is pretty much just going around and helping people fill out the correct forms. In many rural area there are people who sit outside of banks who's soul job is to fill out forms for those who cannot read or write. One of the big challenges will just be telling people that they have access to such a scheme and helping them fill out the correct forms to access it. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guarantee_Act,_2005#The_law_in_action https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Rural_Employment_Guar...

vthallam 9y ago

It's kinda weird that people here focus on how there are power cuts for existing users, how this govt wants to give away free things etc. All this move guarantees is that the people who never officially had a power connection get one. This might well be a marketing scheme, but as long as they deliver, we are good. It's kinda ridiculous that a Prime Minister i 2017 have to make a plan to get everyone power. How difficult was this for the previous govt?

thro1237 9y ago
This is just a renaming of Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyothi yojana launched by the same government in 2015, which itself was a renaming of Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana (RGGVY) launched by the previous government. Yes, one can rename one's own scheme and get another round of press coverage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deen_Dayal_Upadhyaya_Gram_Jyoti_Yojana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deen_Dayal_Upadhyaya_Gram_Jyot...

t1o5 9y ago

An exception in India, a small state called Kerala which has achieved 100% electrification recently. This do not mean there are power outages and voltage problems. This is among many other socio economic achievements which makes it stands out when compared to other states in India. It has achieved these feats through a model of development which is now called "Kerala model". Kerala model: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala_model http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-is-now-totally-electrified/article18618774.ece http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kerala/kerala-is-now-t... About Kerala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kerala

mitul_45 9y ago

I don't know how but somehow power cut hasn't been a thing in my hometown - Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Maybe privatization has helped. Torrent Power has completed its acquisition of the Ahmedabad Electricity Company in 1997 [1]. And since then there hasn't been single power cut longer than 15 minutes which I can remember. Same goes for Surat now. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torrent_Power.

mezuzi 9y ago

Is it a plan or just some Modi propaganda?! 1.3, this is not Slovenia or Cameroon, it's a 1.3 billion population.

deleted 9y ago

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nebula 9y ago

A good analysis of the plan and what it takes to implement it successfully: https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/before-those-bulbs-are-switched-on-what-it-will-take-to-make-saubhagya-a-success https://swarajyamag.com/infrastructure/before-those-bulbs-ar...

anuraj 9y ago

Nothing New - This programme was originally called RAJIV GANDHI GRAMEEN VIDYUTIKARAN YOJANA (RGGVY) (2004-2017) to electrify all villages. During this period only Kerala achieved 100% electrification to all households. This is old wine in new bottle. More window dressing for a country that is facing unprecedented economic slowdown and job losses.

pankajdoharey 9y ago

$2.5 Billion for that many houses seem too low. I think the budget may have to be increased. In any case we would know this by 2018 anyway.

m3kw9 9y ago

Most times I wouldn’t believe, but they proved they could do it from the success so far with the toilet project