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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | The confusion over rural electrification in India -Dipti Jain

The confusion over rural electrification in India -Dipti Jain

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published Published on Feb 21, 2018   modified Modified on Feb 21, 2018
-Livemint.com

Latest data as per the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana and the Saubhagya scheme shows inconsistencies in the number of rural households in the country

The opposition has increasingly questioned the government’s record in rural electrification and alleged frequent shifting of goalposts. For example, the deadline for electrifying all villages now stands at May 2018, after missing the May 2017 target. While available data shows that the Narendra Modi government has indeed made progress in electrification of households, doubts remain over the quality of the data.

The Congress party in a recent tweet claimed that the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government had failed to make much progress on village electrification even though the bulk of the work had been completed by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

However, the criticism seems a bit misplaced. While the UPA government had electrified a much higher number of villages, not all households in those villages were electrified. Therefore, the focus in recent years has rightly shifted from simply electrification of villages to “intensive” electrification.

A village is considered electrified if at least 10% of its households are electrified, among other conditions. Intensive electrification, on the other hand, refers to deepening the electricity infrastructure to provide access to the remaining un-electrified houses.

Data from the Rural Electrification Corporation Ltd (REC), which is the nodal agency executing the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Jyoti Yojana (DDUGJY), shows considerable progress in intensive electrification under the current government.

The DDUGJY website shows that 99.8% of census villages have been electrified till date while “intensive electrification” has been completed in around 80% of villages.

However, detailed official data on the number of households electrified throws up doubts about the quality of these statistics.

The DDUGJY website currently provides state-wise data as of 31 December 2017, while the Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) website provides daily updated numbers. Mint’s analysis of reports for February, August, September, October and November shows frequent monthly changes in the total number of rural households in a state. This affects the calculated metric of “percentage of rural households with electricity”. To illustrate, consider the five states that reported the biggest rise in the rural household electrification rate between February 2017 and December 2017 as per DDUGJY reports. Four of these states reported a decline in the total number of households. Thus, part of the increase in electrification rate is due to re-estimation of the number of households.

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Livemint.com, 21 February, 2018, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/XzTW8Z50QsUCAj8Dd7daWJ/The-confusion-over-rural-electrification-in-India.html


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