Teri to groom rural power entrepreneurs

Under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, any entrepreneur can get into the business of power supply.

The Energy Research Institute (formerly Tata Energy Research Institute) or Teri will begin a capacity building intervention this year to create a body of rural entrepreneurs in the power distribution sector.

The NGO will conduct courses for trainers as part of the National Programme of Franchisees under the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Electrification Programme of the Union Ministry of Power.

The programme is intended to raise a wide network of power entrepreneurs in the distribution business across the Indian countryside.

The courses, to begin sometime in the middle of this year, would see training of trainers drawn from administrative training institutes and training institutes under the electricity boards, Teri Executive Director Leena Srivastava said.

The trained beneficiaries would then conduct classes for applicants in their own institutes, to create resource personnel for a massive rural electrification drive, Srivastava said.

Under the Rajiv Gandhi Grameen Vidyutikaran Yojana, any entrepreneur can get into the business of power supply. But they require training. The Government is making distribution of electricity viable to attract more and more people into the field, the Teri executive director said.

Industry and the NGOs are being lured to become franchise holders. However, the capacity building initiative for the programme has been taken up exclusively by Teri, Srivastava said. She added that the course will be on as long as they are required and the cost would be borne by the power ministry.

Power ministry officials said the total assistance package for the Teri training programme for trainers has not been decided yet.

Srivastav said that the NGO initiative was purely driven by the need to provide access to electricity in rural areas. "We have been involved in such activities before," she said.

As per the programme, the management of rural distribution is to be done through franchisees who may be NGOs, cooperatives or individual entrepreneurs. Panchayat institutions will also be associated.

West Bengal, Uttaranchal, Nagaland, and Karnataka have already initiated steps to deploy franchisees to collect revenues in 22,000 villages.

For more, visit www.teriin.org