Energy is the driving force for development and India does not seem to be aware of this simple truth. Whole country is facing massive energy shortage and what development one can expect under such trying conditions. If India is able to register 6-8% GDP growth main credit goes to the rains which generally ensure adequate production of foods. Manufacturing sector also registers decent growth but if adequate power was made available the progress would have been phenomenal. The sordid tale of a failed country is not nice to hear but truth is bitter and must be faced. Here is a take on that.
"State authorities promise to have the plant running at 100 percent by the end of the month.But, so far, this plant remains a monument not to the problems of Enron, but to India's own corruption, cronyism and weak economic policies — some of the reasons that India remains a perpetual second fiddle to China, its increasingly powerful rival. For all the progress India has made in information technology and service-sector jobs, the country is still unable to provide, water, roads and other basic infrastructure to most of its 1.2 billion people. For instance, about 40 percent of the country's population is not connected to the electricity grid.This energy deficit is also an impediment to development. Here in Maharashtra, India's most industrialized state and the home of its commercial capital, Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the demand for electricity will exceed supply by about 30 percent this year, up from 4.5 percent in 1992.And if industrial companies that set up here can get electricity, they will pay more for it than elsewhere in the world, according to the Prayas Energy Group, a research organization. India's slow progress on power has kept some foreign companies away and has led many of them to largely shun the electricity business, in particular. The failure of the Enron plant in 2001, then known as Dabhol Power, was a turning point. No large power plants have started in Maharashtra since Dabhol".
The above commentary from western critics may not be palatable to patriotic Indian citizens but read carefully and see whether there is some truth in it. Inscrutable are the ways how state and federal governments in India work landing the country into a mess of such Himalayan proportion.
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