Chennai: Free power is one of the topics listed in the agenda for a conference of Chief Ministers and Power Ministers to be held at New Delhi on Monday.

The scheme of free power is always seen as an attractive proposition by the political class to lure the farming community. Free power, whose genesis can be traced to Tamil Nadu two decades ago, has caught the imagination of political leaders in other States such as Andhra Pradesh, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh. Between August 2004 and May 2005, Maharashtra too implemented it.

Numerous critics

There are numerous critics of the scheme and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is one. While commissioning a hydro project in Himachal Pradesh last year, Dr. Singh called it an "obstacle to making the country self-reliant." His predecessor, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, too, had called for rationalisation of power tariff for end-consumers.

It was the spell of acute power shortage faced by Maharashtra in May last year that sealed the fate of the scheme there.

An exception

But, Maharashtra seems to be an exception. Tamil Nadu and Punjab, the two States that briefly scrapped the scheme, had to go back.

Now, about 16 lakh agricultural pump sets get free power in the southern State while in the northern State the number is around nine lakh tubewells.

In Madhya Pradesh, farmers belonging to the Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes with landholding of less than an hectare and pumps up to five HP are given free power. This number works out to 22,000.

In Andhra Pradesh, the Congress captured power in May 2004 after a 10-year-gap. Its main electoral promise was that it would provide free power to farmers.

It made the same promise even in 1999. When the party repeated the promise five years later, the subsequent agrarian crisis in Andhra Pradesh made the scheme appear one of the options to overcome the problem faced by farmers.

Notwithstanding its political appeal, allknow that free power is not sustainable in the long run.

It is a heavy drain on State finances that are as such experiencing serious resource problems. (According to the Electricity Act 2003, if any State Government wants to provide free power, it should bear the cost by making suitable allocation in its budget).

Such a policy encourages indiscriminate use of power, which, eventually, results in depletion of groundwater. Coimbatore, Salem and Dharmapuri districts of Tamil Nadu have suffered enough on account of this scheme, forcing the authorities to devise and implement remedial measures.

Andhra Pradesh too seems to have learnt of the impact of free power. A couple of weeks ago, Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy made it clear that farmers must install capacitors and frictionless foot-valves before March 31 to be eligible for supply of free power from the coming year.

At the same time, it is not that easy to scrap the scheme overnight. Consultations with farmers and streamlining of the scheme to help the needy may lead to a "win-win" situation, both for agriculturists and SEBs.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail