Making sense of energy data

Production cuts in the manufacturing sector is bound to reflect on energy consumption numbers

After the country reached the milestone of providing power to all rural households, the legitimate expectation would have been an increase in power consumption and a demand surge by those who got limited power load through subsidised connections. But two figures released last week suggest that energy consumption in India is not rising, indicating slowdown has hit the core of economic activity in the country.

According to National Power Portal data for October 2019, power generation in the country in October fell to 98,886.73 giga watt per hour from 113,507.43 gwh in the same month last year. That translated into a