Analysis report on the subject of losses to PDD owing to technical and commercial reasons submitted to the PDD reveals that the department is open to general loot without impunity. Managers of PDD, from top to bottom, all have been either partners in the general loot or silent spectators totally denuded of conscience and civic sense. Disclosures that even Ministers are accomplices in power theft may be surprising to the departmental authorities but not to the general public. The media and other sources voicing impressions of civil society have been repeatedly speaking vigorously about a vast nexus among the consumers, departmental functionaries on the ground and sections of administrative cadres directly or indirectly connected with the power industry. What has come out of analysis and made public is what the department is fully aware of. But what mystifies the public is the question what has forced the department to order analysis of technical and commercial losses to the department and how come the Government has issued directions to the Chief Engineer to take stringent actions against the defaulting consumers and tainted ground staff. In other words it is to state that the Government, despite being in full know of the general loot, had adopted the ostrich-like attitude of not having seen, heard or known about it.
Power crisis is becoming a major issue in the State with serious ramifications. The Government may or may not accept it, but the mood of the people in all the three regions of the State is most unfavourable. Nobody wants to talk about the real difficulties in power production and transmission sector that make the Government and the department handicapped. But everybody while reflecting on power crisis raises his finger towards power pilferers and the corrupt PDD establishment. They cannot be wronged; the analysis report vindicates them. Therefore the question is what the Government should do to break the nexus and make the consumers observe rules and regulations of the prime department dealing with entire population of the State. Government’s instructions to the Chief Engineer PDD to take steps of stemming the rot in PDD is nothing more than eye wash. Such instructions are toothless and are meant only to mislead the people into thinking that the Government is serious about either uprooting corruption or stopping the ministers, commercial community, influential gentry and other segments of upper class from power theft. Instead of conveying instructions to the Chief Engineer on what he should do in the matter notwithstanding the fact that he is already in know of his duties and powers, first of all the Government should have taken him to task for negligence, inefficiency and deliberate inaction in the matter. This would have been the ideal way of tackling with the problem. The grapevine has it that in the hierarchy of the PDD, everybody receives his share of spoils through their ground staff something called hafta in police terminology. Government’s so-called instructions to the Chief Engineer are a ploy to shield the corrupt practices in the department as well as of the perpetrators of corruption. The Government has not shown any urgency of addressing the issue on war footing. We do not mean that the Government has to be revengeful, not at all. We mean that the Government should be alive and responsive to its obligations and take all preventive steps that would dilute public anger and resentment and thus help peace prevail in the State. There is lot of rhetoric expressed by our political and bureaucratic class right up to the level of the Chief Minister and the Governor that peace is essential for progress especially in a state torn by two decade long turmoil. This is all good and does no harm to anybody but what they should do to create atmosphere congenial to peace does not seem to be their concern. The question is not of production of adequate power by constructing major or minor hydroelectric power generating units; the question is of efficient management of power transmission and distribution, which are the weakest points at present and this need to be addressed with all urgency.
Why the localities inhabited by upper strata of society, like business class, VIP segment, posh civil lines dwellers and of other sector employments with considerable economic level, show technical or commercial losses to the exchequer anything between 60 to 80 per cent? They can afford to pay their electric bills without any stress to their financial position in comparison to an ordinary citizen doing a petty shop or an ordinary Government or private employee? We do not say that poorer sections should not pay electric bills; they are part of civil society and have to keep pace with it. Electricity theft by any citizen, high or low, is unacceptable. Mohalla elders, respectable citizenry and even religious personalities have a duty of emphasizing upon the general public that national resources are not for general loot. Let the law come down with a heavy hand against the breakers of rule and pilferers of power.
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