https://scroll.in/…/modi-was-elected-to-get-india-sprinting…

Murderer of democratic institutions (Modi) got selected by thre fraud
EVMs to gobble the Master Key, but all he’s doing is screen the movie
in fast motion: The Modi’s claims on full electrification of India’s
villages follow a familiar script.

[Speculations are rife that
the 56″ somehow managed an invite to Wuhan to petition Xi not to
humiliate India militarily, before the next Lok Sabha poll.

《Expecting China to accept India as a permanent member of the UN
Security Council would be too much, but Modi’s failure to gain entry
even to the Nuclear Suppliers Group suggests he has not adequately used
the leverage at his disposal, notably the massive market for
Chinese-made products in India. Perhaps he will pull the NSG rabbit out
of his hat just before next year’s general election for maximum
political impact. Certainly, the impression created by his China trip
was of a prime minister seeking to ward off bad news in an election year
rather than one advancing the cause of his nation.
…
…The
Bharatiya Janata Party proclaimed through front page advertisements in
national dailies that April 28, 2018 was momentous, for it was the day
India achieved full electrification of its villages. In cornering the
glory, the party acted like a batsman who comes to the crease with three
required for victory and takes full credit for the win after scoring
those final runs. Around 97% of India’s villages fulfilled the
definition of being electrified when Modi came to power; he scored just
3% of the runs.》]

https://scroll.in/…/modi-was-elected-to-get-india-sprinting…

Modi was elected to get India sprinting, but all he’s doing is screen the movie in fast motion
The government’s claims on full electrification of India’s villages follow a familiar script.

Following the trend described in my previous column, Modi continued to
under-deliver in international affairs, returning from his
heart-to-heart in Wuhan with Xi Jinping with little concrete to offer.
The Indian government had contained expectations ahead of the meeting,
framing it as a wide ranging philosophical discussion, but the absence
of any real progress stood out at the summit’s conclusion.. Expecting
China to accept India as a permanent member of the UN Security Council
would be too much, but Modi’s failure to gain entry even to the Nuclear
Suppliers Group suggests he has not adequately used the leverage at his
disposal, notably the massive market for Chinese-made products in India.
Perhaps he will pull the NSG rabbit out of his hat just before next
year’s general election for maximum political impact. Certainly, the
impression created by his China trip was of a prime minister seeking to
ward off bad news in an election year rather than one advancing the
cause of his nation.

Taking all credit
If Modi’s NSG failure
is instructive, so is the manner in which his party presents domestic
success. The Brashtachar Jiyadha Psychopaths (BJP) proclaimed through
front page advertisements in national dailies that April 28, 2018 was
momentous, for it was the day India achieved full electrification of its
villages. In cornering the glory, the party acted like a batsman who
comes to the crease with three required for victory and takes full
credit for the win after scoring those final runs. Around 97% of India’s
villages fulfilled the definition of being electrified when Modi came
to power; he scored just 3% of the runs.

Sharing credit for the
process that led to the watershed moment would be anathema for Modi and
Amit Shah. They prefer an us-versus-them, take-no-prisoners approach in
which the decades of Congress rule are viewed as a long era of darkness
and corruption bereft of redeeming qualities. They paint the Indian
National Congress as a malevolent entity to be extirpated rather than
what it is, a democratic opposition party with a nearly identical
economic programme and a significantly different social policy. Modi and
Shah claim to bring radical change while pursuing the same incremental
reform that characterised the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
rule.

India’s record in most areas of economic development over
the four Modi years is very similar to that of the previous 10. Take
power generation, which is relevant to the discussion about rural
electrification. The government’s figures indicate that the years of UPA
II produced an average annual growth rate of 6.06%, and the figure has
dropped slightly to 5.68% under the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance
rule. The tiny difference between the two is less significant than the
fact that India today can produce far more power than it can sell.
Growth of demand has lagged the tremendous augmentation of installed
capacity. Utilisation of capacity in both private and public sector
thermal power plants has plummeted in the last decade, from around 80%
to less than 60%. This has contributed substantially to the crisis of
bad loans threatening India’s banks.

No easy solution
State
Distribution Companies (Discoms), the intermediaries between producers
and consumers, are plagued by losses, and don’t have the resources to
buy power, leaving citizens, even those who can afford the bill, to cope
with power cuts. Successive administrations have tried to solve the
Discom problem. The NDA under Atal Behari Vajpayee introduced the
Accelerated Power Development Programme in 2001, and modified it the
following year. UPA I further altered that plan before coming up with a
new one in 2012 called the Financial Restructuring Plan. The idea was to
have state governments absorb half the liabilities of the Discoms,
giving them breathing room to cut transmission losses, theft and
under-recoveries. Under Modi, the Power Minister Piyush Goyal introduced
the Ujjwal Discom Assurance Yojana or UDAY scheme, which had state
governments take over 75% of the Discoms’ debt while banks restructured
the rest.

The success of all these schemes, which were animated
by similar ideas, depended on electricity providers being able to clean
up their act in the face of populist pressure. The news with respect to
UDAY’s success is mixed. Only seven of the 31 states and union
territories that signed on to the plan reported meeting their 2017
targets to pare losses. Meanwhile, shifting the debt burden is merely
kicking the can down the road, as states will be forced to cut
investment to pay interest on debt they have inherited from the Discoms.
It is a mess with no easy solution, as Arun Jaitley admitted in a rare
moment of public introspection at a 2017 meeting of the BRICS Economic
Forum.

None of this means India is going backwards. Each year,
more people get access to power and more people can afford to pay for
it. The slow pace of change is what can seem depressing. A village is
considered electrified if at least 10% of the households within it have
access to power. That’s a very low threshold, and crossing it can only
be cause for muted celebration. What India really looks forward to is a
time when every citizen will not only have access to power, but actually
use it to light rooms, cool homes, play television, and charge mobile
phones and computers. That is no pipe dream, but a privilege residents
of dozens of countries enjoy today. We began 70 years ago by crawling
towards that target, and 25 years ago began to walk. Narendra Modi was
elected on the promise of getting India sprinting, but all he’s doing is
screen the movie in fast motion.

—
Peace Is Doable