India – Experiences of Partha Majumdar

Electricity in India

India is severe shortage of Electricity. From a recent estimate 300 million people in India do not have access to electricity. This is out of a total population of 1.4 billion people in the world who do not have access to electricity. Based on Government of India analysis, there is a shortage of 9.8% in 2012 (demand being 122 GW as against the availability being 110 GW). Accordingly to the International Energy Agency, India needs adding 600 GW to 1200 GW of energy by 2050 to meet the needed demand. This equates to an investment need of USD 135 billion. All this being said, the electricity sector in India had an installed capacity of 225.133 GW as of May 2013, which is the world’s fifth largest.

The impact of this energy crisis are severe on India. The impacts are felt on the basic needs of the country which includes Agricultural Sector, Industrialisation and Environmental concerns. All of these have direct impact on the citizen of India as it prevent the needed rate of growth of the economy to be satisfactory.

The impact of the Agricultural Sector is that due to lack of Electricity, the agricultural sector cannot modernise and thus cannot increase productivity leading to its inability to fulfill the food demand of the citizens of India.
The impact on Industrialisation is that enough industries cannot come into existence in India to meet the demand for reduction of unemployment and it cannot lead to reduction in inflation due to the dependence in importing of essential commodities.
The impact on the Environmental Concerns is that as a result of lack of enough electricity, India continues to work with conventional energy sources which is leading to the degradation of the environment by causing pollution.

A quick fix solution could be that India grow its ability in production of power using Nuclear Energy. This mechanism can help in meeting demand quickly.

The implications of this strategy are as follows.

By trying to adopt Nuclear Technology quickly could lead to compromise on adequate testing of the essentials which could lead to safety concerns of the citizens of India.
As India does not have enough sources of raw material required for Nuclear Power Plants and thus would need importing of the essential fuels, it demands major changes in the foreign policy which may compromise India’s sovereignty.