AIPEF Secretary General Shaliender Dubey. 
Power sector expert for technocrat at helm of affairs
Yogindra Mohan

Patiala

Shaliender Dubey, Secretary General of the All-India Power Engineers Federation (AIPEF), has suggested that the government should agree to have an experienced power engineer at the helm of affairs in the power sector to ensure faster decision making and expediting capacity addition target and reducing AT & C losses.

In an interview with Daily Post, Shaliender Dubey said the recent order of the Union government for financial restructuring of the states distribution companies was a clear declaration of the failure of the decade-old reforms. This was evident from the document that stated “States assume full responsibility of running the utilities on sound commercial basis”. That was precisely what was envisaged under the previous legislation. The entire legislation relating to the power supply of industry was changed and the Electricity Act 2003 was enacted to dismember and privatize the State Electricity Boards and to set up independent regulator with possibility with tariff setting. The government now admits the failure and requires that the state governments and not the independent regulators should ensure upward tariff revision as a condition for financial restructuring.

He said the proposed financial restructuring neither addresses the causes of persistent ill health of the power supply industry nor does it seek to remedy the ailment. The restructuring is aimed at securitization the huge losses of the power supply industry and transfer them into bonds which at a later stage could be sold into the international debt market. This would only result in the transfer of huge assets built in the last decade to private and multi-national sector for a pittance.

The power sector expert said the situation in the power supply industry was deteriorating very rapidly. This would badly affect the economy and will cause damage to the associating manufacturing industries like BHEL.

Dubey said the jettisoning of the legislation and all the institutions that were created after independence was justified on huge private investments coming into the industry. In the last decade very limited investments have come, that too only in the most profitable sectors in the power supply industry resulting in either high tariff or higher losses to the electricity boards. The imbalances in the investment in the various sectors particularly in transmission coupled with a weak politically and bureaucratically dictated regulatory mechanism was the cause of the recent black out in the North and the East. Grid failures shall become the order of the day in the future, he said.

He said unlike in the past, where comprehensive fuel-energy policies were formulated for the country and plans in the entire energy industry was based on that, today the policy is formulated and modified to suit investor requirements. The consequence is acute shortfall in coal and natural gas and unrealistic and dangerous plans for nuclear energy.