Electricity for All: Ten Ideas towards Turning Rhetoric into Reality
- A Discussion Paper , Prayas, May 2010

This discussion paper suggests few concrete action ideas that could be taken up to accelerate effective electricity access for poor.

Even after six decades after independence, and two decades since the arrival of ‘reforms’, the poor continue to miss the electricity bus. The first decade of reforms had no explicit focus on poor. The few recent initiatives like the Rajiv Gandhi household electrification program or quantification of standards of performance for distribution companies are yet to yield results. There is an overwhelming feeling in civil society that the basic needs of the poor have been neglected, while there is disproportionate interest in market related issues, which immediately benefit large consumers. This paper suggests ten concrete action ideas, which could result in a quick improvement of electricity service to the poor. These ideas have to be implemented by regulators, distribution companies and the Government. These are techno-financially feasible and can be adopted within the existing framework.