Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 73,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'catslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 73,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'catslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 74,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 74,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

            } else {
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 3 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 13104
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$maxBufferLength = (int) 8192
$file = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php'
$line = (int) 853
$message = 'Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853'
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Code Context
            $response->getStatusCode(),

            ($reasonPhrase ? ' ' . $reasonPhrase : '')

        ));
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 3 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 13104
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$reasonPhrase = 'OK'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitStatusLine() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 54
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Code Context
                    $value

                ), $first);

                $first = false;
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0da045f8cd-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 13104,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;
&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 13226,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 3 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 13104
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;em&gt;(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div style=&quot;text-align: justify&quot;&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$cookies = []
$values = [
	(int) 0 => 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
]
$name = 'Content-Type'
$first = true
$value = 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitHeaders() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 55
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

<head>

    <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo Configure::read('SITE_URL'); ?><?php echo $urlPrefix;?><?php echo $article_current->category->slug; ?>/<?php echo $article_current->seo_url; ?>.html"/>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp'
$dataForView = [
	'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		'id' => (int) 13104,
		'title' => 'How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar',
		'subheading' => '',
		'description' => '<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>',
		'credit_writer' => 'The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms',
		'article_img' => '',
		'article_img_thumb' => '',
		'status' => (int) 1,
		'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
		'lang' => 'EN',
		'category_id' => (int) 16,
		'tag_keyword' => '',
		'seo_url' => 'how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226',
		'meta_title' => null,
		'meta_keywords' => null,
		'meta_description' => null,
		'noindex' => (int) 0,
		'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		'most_visit_section_id' => null,
		'article_big_img' => null,
		'liveid' => (int) 13226,
		'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'edate' => '',
		'tags' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		'[new]' => false,
		'[accessible]' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[hasErrors]' => false,
		'[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[repository]' => 'Articles'
	
	},
	'articleid' => (int) 13104,
	'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar',
	'metaKeywords' => 'subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers',
	'metaDesc' => '



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...',
	'disp' => '<div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div>',
	'lang' => 'English',
	'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/',
	'site_title' => 'im4change',
	'adminprix' => 'admin'
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	'id' => (int) 13104,
	'title' => 'How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar',
	'subheading' => '',
	'description' => '<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em>
</div>
<div style="text-align: justify">
<br />
</div>',
	'credit_writer' => 'The Economic Times, 16 February, 2012, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/policy/how-to-slash-power-subsidies/articleshow/11906582.cms',
	'article_img' => '',
	'article_img_thumb' => '',
	'status' => (int) 1,
	'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
	'lang' => 'EN',
	'category_id' => (int) 16,
	'tag_keyword' => '',
	'seo_url' => 'how-to-slash-power-subsidies-by-ajay-shankar-13226',
	'meta_title' => null,
	'meta_keywords' => null,
	'meta_description' => null,
	'noindex' => (int) 0,
	'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	'most_visit_section_id' => null,
	'article_big_img' => null,
	'liveid' => (int) 13226,
	'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'edate' => '',
	'tags' => [
		(int) 0 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 3 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	'[new]' => false,
	'[accessible]' => [
		'*' => true,
		'id' => false
	],
	'[dirty]' => [],
	'[original]' => [],
	'[virtual]' => [],
	'[hasErrors]' => false,
	'[errors]' => [],
	'[invalid]' => [],
	'[repository]' => 'Articles'

}
$articleid = (int) 13104
$metaTitle = 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar'
$metaKeywords = 'subsidies,Energy,Agriculture,Farmers'
$metaDesc = '



The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible...'
$disp = '<div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option.</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify">The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify"><em>(The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)</em></div><div style="text-align: justify"><br /></div>'
$lang = 'English'
$SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/'
$site_title = 'im4change'
$adminprix = 'admin'

include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51

How to slash power subsidies by Ajay Shankar

The irrationality and waste in energy subsidies in India has been a perennial theme in analysis of the Indian economy and in reform prescriptions. Progress has, however, turned out to be elusive in the face of ground realities and feasible politics.  The power ministry, after struggling for over a decade through repeated exhortations, had the satisfaction of getting a resolution in a Chief Ministers Conference in 2001 that free supply of electricity to farmers should be done away with. Nevertheless, 10 years later, the situation regarding free or, practically free, supply of electricity to farmers is practically the same. No chief minister seems inclined to touch the issue.  The power ministry has since given up and is now content with trying for compliance of the provision of the Electricity Act that requires the state governments to pay from the state budget for the subsidy involved in supply of power to farmers. Apart from the enormous strain on state budgets, this leads to waste of electricity through the widespread use of energy-inefficient pumps.  What is worse, it leads to excessive watering and lowering of the groundwater table. Large parts of India are already experiencing depletion of groundwater and face the real prospect of a water crisis well before the consequences of climate change are felt.  One of the practical technocratic approaches that has emerged and seems to have worked well in some states is the separation of power supply feeders for irrigation pump sets from those of rural settlements. While this involves some extra costs by way of additional and redundant infrastructure, it enables rationing of power supply for irrigation to meet actual needs of the crops being sowed. Such supply can also be given during off-peak hours when demand in the rest of the system is low.  With this segregation, rural households can then be given power supply at par with urban areas in terms of both hours of supply and rates. For parity in hours of power supply, rural households would gladly pay normal urban rates. The private power company for Greater Noida tried this many years ago quite successfully. Parity in hours of supply would, at one stroke, enable Bharat to benefit from economic integration with India and the global economy.  The power ministry needs to use its leverage with the states and, even central funds, to persuade the states to adopt this approach. With increasing prosperity of a growing percentage of rural households, penetration of TV and other electrical appliances, revenues would rise and the subsidy burden for supply to rural households would decline. It would also be easier to have effective energy audit.  This would make it more difficult to pass off theft of electricity in urban areas as supply to agriculture, a widespread practice in many states. If supply to agriculture is efficiently rationed and restricted to off-peak hours and the electricity regulators implement the tariff policy that mandates lower rates for off-peak hours, the subsidy burden would come down substantially.  Attempts could then be made to persuade farmers in some villages to try out electricity consumption through smart cards. This would incentivise more efficient use of both energy and water. More energy-efficient pumps would be used and fields would not be unnecessarily flooded.  Like power supply to agriculture, kerosene oil subsidies have been a politically-sensitive issue. The large-scale diversion of subsidised kerosene oil for adulteration of petrol is well-known. The brave attempt by a public functionary to check this recently cost him his life and attracted a great deal of public attention. The rationale for kerosene oil subsidy in rural India has been the lighting needs of people: for cooking, they have access to firewood and cow dung cakes. Once evening supply of electricity to the habitation(s) in a village is assured, the justification for subsidised supply of kerosene to that village ceases to exist.  A village community through its Panchayat may gladly choose to agree to the discontinuation of the supply of subsidised kerosene if evening power supply is ensured. This would spare the political leadership at the state as well as the central level of the burden of deciding to do away with the kerosene oil subsidy; they would only be agreeing to what some villages may choose. Initial success could snowball.  The difficult part would be to supply electricity in the evening. At a macro level, ensuring evening power supply requires the elimination of peaking shortages and that has been an elusive goal. The problem would be less intractable as the number of villages opting initially for foregoing subsidised kerosene oil supply would not be many. The Centre can initially try out the programme in states that are, relatively speaking, comfortable in terms of power supply and have separated agricultural feeders from those supplying rural households.  The Centre can use a part of its unallocated quota of power from central generating stations as an incentive. Funds for local electricity generation from biomass and solar energy could be earmarked for these villages to augment grid supply and ensure evening power supply. Assured evening power supply would be the key to success. BPL households are, in any case, being given free power connections under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana. For remote, scattered settlements, solar lanterns may be an appropriate option. The savings from the kerosene oil subsidy may be enough to recover the cost of investments in local electricity generation and storage to ensure evening power supply. The elimination of kerosene oil subsidies with a far better quality of life for rural households across India would become a real possibility.  (The author is member secretary of the National Manufacturing Competitiveness Council)