From Lattus to Lasers

The history of electricity in India traces an inverted arc – like a smiley – which starts in the colonial period with private electricity capacity leading, regresses to a mode of near complete public sector monopoly by the 1980s and then traces the upward incline to a near 50% share for private electricity suppliers – not a full smiley but a slightly lop-sided one. The half-smile – like Mona Lisa’s – masks long periods of misallocation of public capital, unabashed populism, and careless adherence to ‘path dependencies’ which plagues bureaucracies the world over. This book asks a few inconvenient questions and provides some out-of-the-box solutions with the intention of enlarging the public debate around how the electricity sector should be regulated and developed going forward. Foreword Preface Introduction Electricity dispels the darkness

The origins of electricity

The colonial electricity for the 1950–1984 Democratizing electricity supply

The Electricity (Supply) Act, 1948

Central planning favours public investment-led development

The Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956

The fiscal cost of public electricity supply

Electricity-intensive development

Changes in consumption pattern The return of private 1985–2020

International comparison of electricity supply

Profligate use of electricity shunned

Incentives for electricity reform

Union government’s initiatives for structural reform in electricity The outcomes of reforms

The end of supply shortages

Generation capacity utilization lower than optimal

Transmission shines

Private power exchanges

the weakest link in the value chain

The unfinished reforms agenda Planned electricity supply-side triumph or copycat industrial policy?

Putting industrial development above basic social and human needs

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater

Misallocation of public funds

Borrowed templates

Path dependency

Economic growth and competitiveness

New pathologies Unresolved issues in electricity supply

Electricity too few or too many?

Has competition in supply increased?

Has the unbundling splintered supply to unviable levels?

Measures to enhance competition

Autonomy for regulators

The needs of viable power markets

The need for a ‘smart’ grid

Four short-term hard choices Trends favouring India

High growth can make green power affordable

Renewable and hydroelectricity offer unutilized potential

Growth of digital connectivity

Symmetric policy preferences across parties Bibliography and notes Adults who are concerned about topical issues but lack the understanding to make sense of what they read or watch in the mass media Energy, Power, Mechanical Engineering