Light and wrong

This summer, the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) is selling power to other states, earning more than Rs 1 crore a day. It sounds surre...

This summer, the Punjab State Electricity Board (PSEB) is selling power to other states, earning more than Rs 1 crore a day. It sounds surreal. It’s the first May in 30 years that the PSEB has been power surplus; it usually spends the month planning power cut schedules.

Like in West Bengal a decade ago, the turnaround has a another side to it. There has been a substantial decrease in electricity consumption by industry. A good winter has also helped. As such, 200 mw a day is being sold by PSEB to the Power Trading Corporation, which in turn is selling it to Maharashtra.

‘‘Heavy snowfall in winter, 35-40 per cent more than last winter, has helped us. Our hydel generation has increased,’’ says B.K. Bindel, member (generation), PSEB. The Board says there are almost no power cuts in rural or urban residential areas. The short duration cuts — for an hour or so a day — in, say, Ludhiana it explains away as ‘‘maintenance problems’’.

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Industry still suffers a bit. Three-hour power cuts are imposed at peak load hours on a rotational basis. Avtar Singh, general secretary, Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings, explains it: ‘‘PSEB did not increase its generation by even a single unit in many years, following which we faced power cuts in summer and even winter. But since April, demand by engineering units has decreased by 40-50 per cent, due to VAT, increase in steel prices.’’

WHATEVER the statistics may say, politicians have a logic of their own. Amarinder Singh, chief minister of Punjab, recently announced PSEB would be purchasing power worth Rs 2,400 crore this year, as opposed to Rs 1,600 crore a year ago, to ensure ‘‘better supply to farmers and industry’’.

As elections approach — they are due in early 2007 — the danger of power’s populism returns. At a public meeting this past week, Amarinder promised to reintroduce free power for farmers. This rang alarm bells, especially given it was Amarinder who had done away with this disastrous freebie on becoming chief minister in 2002.

Punjab’s power crisis is traced by some to the ‘‘free electricity for farmers’’ promise on which the Akali Dal came to office in 1997. It pushed the state into a financial quagmire.

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On becoming chief minister in 2002, Amarinder pointed out the Akali largesse had left PSEB with a staggering Rs 5,000 crore debt.

What’s more, the Akalis’ free power was mighty erratic. According to Amarinder himself, it forced farmers to spend Rs 3,500 per month on every five-horsepower diesel engine they had to take recourse to. Even BJP politician Balramji Das Tandon, an Akali ally, admitted free power was no help: ‘‘Farmers now want assured power supply. They are ready to pay.’’

OVER three years, Amarinder has been quite proud of his decision to charge farmers for power. He has pushed PSEB into the profit zone and begun exporting power. That’s why his loose references to ‘‘free power’’ have the state sweating.

Don’t politicians ever learn? Wait for the next act of the power play.