Power surplus does not mean no power cuts . There is huge mismanagement when it comes to electricity distribution in India . Also Pakistan though might have more load shedding than India more % of our population have access to electricity compared to India where 21 % has been in virtual darkness since 47 .
Pakistan 97 % of population access to electricity
India 79 %
In India, 300 million people don’t have access to electricity, power cuts are rampant and per capita power consumption is significantly lower than the world average. In sharp contrast to this, the Power Ministry says India is power-surplus.
“India is likely to experience the energy surplus of 1.1 per cent in 2016-17,” says the Load Generation and Balance Report (LGBR) 2016-17 of the Central Electricity Authority (CEA), which functions under the Power Ministry.
Surplus or deficit is determined by calculating the difference between the demand for power and availability. It is the definition of “demand” that lies at the base of this paradox.
What this clearly tells us is that India as a whole has surplus power. Nevertheless, large parts of the country still suffer from power cuts. Just go to google and say
power cuts + India and you will get a spate of news reports on it.
One such news report recently appeared in The Economic Times. It points out that no Pan-India data on power cuts is available, nevertheless, rural India and small towns experience regular power cuts.
An NGO called Prayas, has been monitoring power cuts in different parts of the country and coming up with a monthly report. As of now the April 2016 report is available. The report collects data from 160 locations (33 Rural and 127 Urban). It essentially looks at three main parameters of the quality of power supply. These are: i) no supply hours, ii) number of interruptions, and, iii) evening hours of supply.The report states that in April 2016, 46 per cent of the locations experienced power cuts of more than 15 hours. 24 per cent of the locations experienced 30 power cuts of more than fifteen minutes each. 16 per cent of the locations experienced an average 30 minutes of power cut in the evenings.
The one weakness with these figures is that most of the locations where the NGO is monitoring power cuts are in urban areas. The power situation in urban areas is much better than rural areas. Hence, to that extent these figures are not representative enough. The overall power cuts are likely to be much worse.
The following graph shows us how bad the power cuts are in the state of Uttar Pradesh. In the five locations that Prayas tracks in the state, there was no power for 418 hours on an average in April, 2016. This works out to around 17.4 days. Hence, there was no power in the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, for more than half of April, as per the Prayas report. Interestingly, Bihar did much better than Uttar Pradesh and had no power for only 7.5 days during the course of the month.
While this data is not definitive, it does tell us that power cuts are still the norm in large parts of India. This despite the fact that the country now has surplus power.