Speaking at Graduation ceremony at Indian School of Business (ISB) campus in Chandigarh, Union Minister for Power, Coal and New and Renewable Energy disclosed that 280 million people in the country were without electric power connection until date. This is not a small number. It means every fourth or fifth man in India goes without electric power. Obviously, it reminds us of how much more needs to be done in this country to bring electric power to every person. That is what the Minister highlighted when he was addressing the Graduation ceremony of ISB.
We are simply astonished to find such a large number of populations living in darkness and not hoping any near future date when they will see the light at night. The country is seriously engaged in producing adequate power to meet domestic needs. However, notwithstanding all the efforts made, we are still to go a long distance to achieve hundred per cent availability of energy. The Minister believes that there is no scarcity of power in the country. The problem, as he puts it, is in distribution and transmission. The Minister has touched upon the question of some innovative thinking on consumption of power. He has a point in asking the ISB to come up with a proposal for setting up an innovative lab on energy conservation for which his ministry was ready to provide funds. We have a ministry for Renewable Energy but no significant results are obtainable until date. Of course, some projects aimed at increasing the capacity for generating electric power are completed and some are in a state of completion. We do recognize that. The point we like to make is that considering the ever-growing number of people, power generation has not increased respectively. This deficit should be bridged over. India has tremendous capacity for harnessing solar energy but that needs investment. This is what the Minister means by looking for alternate sources of funding. He has in his mind some alternate sources which he might like to tap at proper time. India must give power production a priority because our industries, our economic growth and our political stability depend on uninterrupted supply of power.
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