Cheap electricity will electrify the economy.

The state electricity board in Rajasthan has debts of over Rs 1 trillion. Why? This is where the truth is fudged. The glib answer is that it is because electricity is being subsidised and the price of electricity should be increased regularly. The truth is that the subsidies are given, not to everyone, but to certain sections of society to get votes. Since most people live in villages politicians have promised free electricity to farmers to win elections. Figures from Rajasthan bear this out. From 1947 to 2013 industrial use of electricity has fallen from 71% to 45% while the share of agriculture has risen from 3% to 18%. Politicians are also huge users of electricity and since they are immune from prosecution they do not pay their bills. Including the self-professed Honest Man. To ask the rest of the urban population to pay for all the stolen electricity would raise bills to astronomical levels and result in protests. Electricity should be cheap in India because we are sitting on 301 billion tonnes of coal but mines were handed over to friends and relatives, without mining experience, so that a majority of mines are inactive. We had to import 242 millions tonnes of coal in the last fiscal and, since coal is only used for producing electricity we are having to pay huge bills. No doubt politicians and their friends made money on imports. They never lose. But price of anything is linked to demand and demand for electricity has fallen, partly due to the weak economy and partly due to a relatively mild summer, when the heat has been suppressed by regular rain, so there is excess capacity. Yet distribution companies are clamoring for higher prices. The reason is that generating companies have been promised payment for ' capacity utilisation ' which means that even if a plant is running at 10% capacity it has to be paid for its full capacity. So, the company cuts down on its fuel cost but gets paid in full. Double profits and double pegs all round. Our bills have doubled but we are told that electricity is being subsidised and we are so pleased. How stupid can we be? However, there is no doubt that producing electricity from coal is bad for the environment. Burning coal produces smoke into the atmosphere and tragically in Punjab children near a power plant developed uranium toxicity from ash. If India is to progress we need to produce large amounts of cheap electricity for manufacturing and domestic use, while decreasing pollution. Sounds paradoxical but it maybe possible to produce vast amounts of electricity from renewable sources. Germany is already way ahead, Wall Street firms are beginning finance renewable projects and even Saudi Arabia is talking about exporting renewable electricity. We need new technology that will run air conditioners in homes on solar energy. That will instantly reduce consumption from fossil fuels. Do we have the brains?