The preparations for the Commonwealth Games (CWG) have received such a hammering from the media and sections of the public, many of whom have made plans to get out of the city, that someone looking down from outer space might wonder if there has been any long-term improvement in civic amenities. The onlooker might, however, notice a very well-lit Capital, in itself an achievement for a city that till not long ago was plagued by chronic power outages.
The bosses who run Delhi’s privatised electricity supply companies (discoms) have assured citizens as well as the powers-that-be that they are well prepared for the CWG with plentiful backup of electricity and that the extravaganza should pass without a flicker. If some larger public good can be achieved from the CWG, an uninterrupted power supply is surely one. One visible result is the gawping crowds that gather in the evenings to admire the effective rainbow-coloured lighting of the vast winged canopy that crowns the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium. In its own way, it is as spectacular a display as the lighting of Rashtrapati Bhavan, Parliament House and the Lutyens complex at Vijay Chowk on Republic Day.
How long these good times will last is another matter. The discoms say that given Delhi’s growing hunger for electricity, and the cheap rates at which it is sold to consumers, the day may not be too far when power sputters out and the city returns to the dreaded days when the government-run Delhi Electricity Supply Undertaking (DESU) and Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB) were in charge. Those were the dark days when the National Capital Territory was contemptuously known as National Blackout Territory.
Since 2002-2003 when Anil Ambani and Tata-owned companies took over, they have been successful on some fronts: bringing down aggregate technical and commercial (AT&C) electricity losses, mainly due to inefficiency and pilferage, from about 52 per cent to around 18.5 per cent this year; they have achieved this by reducing theft, modernising the distribution network and improving metering, billing and payment collections. In some relatively well-off parts of Delhi, such as Hauz Khas and R K Puram, AT&C losses are down to 3-4 per cent, comparable to well-run cities like Singapore (4 per cent) and Melbourne (8-9 per cent).
But Delhi’s power requirements have also grown at a brisk rate, from 3,000 Mw in 2002-03 to 4,720 Mw currently; of this the city only generates about 1,100 Mw and the rest is purchased from national corporations like NTPC and NHPC, and private suppliers. And herein lies the rub: whereas cost of buying power has gone up steeply, from Rs 1.42 per Kw in 2002-03 to Rs 3.43 per Kw this year, the percentage increase has not been passed on to consumers. This is because the Delhi Electricity Regulatory Commission has repeatedly ruled out an increase in consumer tariffs. Delhi’s domestic consumers pay lower unit rates, at 30 paise per Kw, than those in metros like Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Hyderabad who pay between 40 and 50 paise per Kw. Ironically, Delhi’s neighbouring towns like Faridabad, Noida, Gurgaon and Jaipur — and even Amritsar — have more outages despite paying higher rates.
Such a scenario is beginning to cast shadows on Delhi’s brightly-lit future. The discoms are nervous because they are borrowing money to sustain the financial gap. The Capital’s political establishment says its hands are tied in support of a price increase because the regulator won’t allow it. It is true that in many parts of the city the power situation has shown a marked improvement — complaints are better attended to, repairs are more efficient and billing and payment have been made kid simple. Neighbourhood groceries will pay your bijli bill for a small charge.
But how long will shining lights be there in the big city? “Increased demand for power and a better system have also raised expectations,” a senior official told me. “If we return to the black era of outages, electricity stations will be stoned by the people.”