Bihar entrepreneurs light up in the dark

Darbhanga, which gets regular electricity supply only for four hours daily, has more than 400 entrepreneurs like Rajesh Kumar. The 23-year-old supplies power in Lakshmi Sagar locality. He started with one 5-KV generator in 2000, now he has three with 110 customers.

The government’s promises to improve power supply in the city don’t gladden his heart. ‘‘If the Bihar State Electricity Board (BSEB) improves the power supply, my plans of adding two more generators by next year will not materialise,’’ he says. Kumar charges between Rs 200 and Rs 250 from customers for one bulb and one fan connection.

The story is the same in almost all of Bihar’s small towns. The power capital, Patna, is also its electricity capital, consuming the maximum. Here load shedding averages only four hours daily, where as in Darbhanga the supply lasts that long.

In villages of northern Bihar, electricity remains a dream. ‘‘In north Bihar, the per capita annual consumption is merely 22 units — almost one-twentieth of the national average,’’ says K.A.H. Subramaniam, Chairman, BSEB.

Of the 80,000 non-electrified villages in India, 26,500 are in Bihar. In the last decade, the disparity between Bihar’s per-capita power consumption and the national average has widened drastically.

Those like Rajesh Kumar have neatly filled this gap. They buy non-branded diesel-run motors — even of discarded irrigation pumps — locally assemble them to a dynamo and have a running generator. A local distribution network is engineered with cables running from roof to roof.

Rajesh Kumar started his business with an investment of Rs 15,000. With his three generators, he supplies electricity from seven in the evening to seven in the morning.

According to regulations, producing electricity for selling needs licensing by the BSEB, but this is hardly ever followed. For individual use, one can have generators up to 5 KW.

But then the BSEB can hardly crack down. Its plants in Barauni and Muzaffarpur produce not even 20 per cent of the total 680 MW electricity demand in the state. The rest is met from Central power sector units, mostly of National Thermal Power Corporation.

The board also has to contend with whopping losses during transmission and distribution — nearly 43 per cent. ‘‘Thirty per cent of the total losses is pure theft,’’ says Subramaniam. Most of Bihar’s transmission lines are unusable.

However, the powers that be in Patna insist they have an imminent package that will make the likes of Rajesh Kumar jobless. ‘‘Power sector will get the maximum priority in the next four to five years,’’ promises Laloo Prasad Yadav, leader of the ruling RJD.

The BSEB is planning to lease its Muzaffarpur plant to NTPC and to transfer the Barauni plant to Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) on a turn-key basis. ‘‘This will boost the production at these two plants to the extent of almost meeting the present demand,’’ says Subramaniam. In the next six years, the BSEB also plans to spend Rs 365 crore on contructing transmission lines.

However, many of the loans and assistance offered to the state by the Centre and other agencies are linked to the restructuring of the BSEB. The board makes an annual loss of more than Rs 500 crore. Two years ago, an MoU was signed between the state and Central governments to restructure the BSEB, and separate the generation, transmission and distribution. ‘‘It is taking more time than it should have,’’ admits Shyam Rajat, Minister of State for Power. Those who know Bihar say this was expected. Which is why Rajesh Kumar looks in no hurry to find another job.