Bihar’s per capital electricity consumption, at 75 kilowatt-hour (kWh), is the lowest in India and far below the national average of 613 units according to a recent report titled Energy Injustice.
This is not unusual; Bihar falls below the national average on almost all indices of development and wellbeing. Yet the disparity between Bihar and the rest of India is way too high when it comes to electricity consumption and access to electricity. Consumption is more than 8 times lower in Bihar than the rest of India. Less than 10% households have electricity connection in Bihar and only 3% of farmers use electricity for irrigation. Half of the villages are yet to be electrified and even in urban areas, people pay Rs. 10-12/unit to private power generators to get 24 hours power supply.
Low consumption of electricity is not just a symptom of Bihar’s underdevelopment; it is a cause. Lack of power makes every economic activity–farming, agro-processing, manufacturing, service provision, education– uncompetitive; a hassle. I firmly believe that improving electricity supply will give a boost to Bihar’s economy like no other single intervention will. We need massive investments in electricity sector in Bihar; the returns will be very high.
November 25, 2009 at 6:25 am |
Unfortunately, centre has been quite antagonistic to all the plans put forth by the Govt of Bihar. Nuclear power plants have been refused to Bihar, coal linkages from Jharkhand prefer far away Punjab and Haryana and consumption of water from the Ganga basin has been banned by CWC. The result is that of the 70K crore worth of power MOU that was signed, only a small fraction is getting constructed. This is an area which shows a clear anti Bihar bias of the centre which has most of the authority on power related matters. One silver lining is that the allocation of power to Bihar from central pool, which was till recently getting diverted to other states, has come down. However, a lot needs to be done.