In recent months, electricity has been one of the few infrastructure sectors to perform well, turning in a 9.3 per cent growth between April and August 2011. Over the past six years, electricity generation has grown at an average annual rate of 5.3 per cent. Yet, with fast rising demand, availability has always been an issue in India.
According to the Central Electricity Authority, India’s total energy requirement during the first half of this year – April-September – was 456,011 MU, compared to 429,348 MU the previous year. Of this requirement, the total availability was short by six per cent, a better situation than last year’s deficit of 9.6 per cent.
As always, the problem is uneven across the country, with Chandigarh and Lakshadweep being the only two Union Territories (UTs) with no deficit in supply. States and UTs that have seen the lowest energy deficit over the first half of this year are Gujarat, Orissa and Delhi. The ones that have seen the highest deficit are Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Meghalaya, Jammu and Kashmir and Bihar — all with shortages running higher than 20 per cent of the requirement. Maharashtra falls in fifth place with a deficit of 14.4 per cent, turning in a performance that is much worse than other industrialised states like Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. In Madhya Pradesh and Mizoram, the deficit was more than 10 per cent of the requirement this year. (Click here for graphs)
Even as most states have performed better with reduced deficits this year compared to last year, the situation has become significantly worse in Bihar, Meghalaya and Daman and Diu. In Sikkim, Jharkhand and Dadra and Nagar Haveli, the deficit has worsened, albeit marginally.
Jharkhand stands out for another reason — it has moved the fastest on rural electrification over the past year. In August 2010, just 31.1 per cent of Jharkhand’s villages had electricity, the only state with less than 50 per cent coverage in rural areas. And by the end of August this year, more than 61 per cent of its villages were connected. Rajasthan, Assam and Bihar follow with the highest coverage over the year. Manipur, Mizoram and Nagaland have seen no increase in rural electrification over the past year. Nagaland has the lowest coverage of the three at 64.4 per cent. Of the larger states, Uttar Pradesh has not moved ahead since last year, around 12 per cent of its villages remain without electricity. Overall, though close to 40,000 villages have been electrified in the past 12 months, as on the end of August, 54,170 villages were still without electricity connections. In three states – Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Orissa – more than 10,000 villages were without electricity.
Despite its stellar performance in recent months, India’s power sector faces severe problems, coal shortfalls and precarious financial condition of state electricity boards, to name just two. Though capacity augmentation is being envisaged, the Draft Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five-Year Plan has noted that distribution is the weakest link in the power system. Clearly, the results on the ground will depend crucially on reforms across the power sector.
Indian States Development Scorecard is a weekly feature by Indicus Analytics that focuses on the progress in India and the states across various socio-economic parameters
sumita@indicus.net