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All Indian Villages Now Have Access To Electricity (indiatimes.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: All Indian villages now have access to electricity. Manipur's Leisang village became the last non-electrified inhabited village to join India's mainline supply network at 5.30pm on Saturday, an important milestone in the country's journey towards universal electricity access. This means that all 597,464 inhabited villages in the country now have access to power, fulfilling a promise the Prime Minister had made on August 15, 2015, when he announced that all unelectrified villages would get power over the next 1,000 days.
The last inhabited village to be powered through the off-grid system -- isolated supply networks, mostly with solar power plants -- was Pakol, also in Manipur, a small state in Eastern India. While basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and lines need to be set up in inhabited localities, including Dalit hamlets, a village is considered electrified if 10 per cent of its households and public places such as schools, panchayat office and health centre have access to electricity.
The last inhabited village to be powered through the off-grid system -- isolated supply networks, mostly with solar power plants -- was Pakol, also in Manipur, a small state in Eastern India. While basic infrastructure such as distribution transformer and lines need to be set up in inhabited localities, including Dalit hamlets, a village is considered electrified if 10 per cent of its households and public places such as schools, panchayat office and health centre have access to electricity.
This has nothing to do with the PM's promise. Electrification was proceeding for decades even before he came to power or made the announcement, in fact at a faster rate. In the 10 years before, the village electrification percentage went from 78%to 96%. Only the last 4% was completed in the past 4 years. So electrification actually slowed down after he made the announcement!
Open defecation is different from the other problems. It is not merely a lack of resources or infrastructure. It is also deeply cultural. The Indian government has actually had better luck getting the poor to use communal toilets and latrines than their better off neighbors. They don't want to be seen using the same facilities as a bunch of dirty Dalits.
Bangladesh has nearly eliminated open defecation, and has seen a seven-fold drop in early childhood mortality from diarrhea. They are doing better than India despite being a poorer country.
In case you didn't know, PM Modi's clever spin is that if his government has put up even a single pole in a whole village, providing electricity to say a govt office there, or put up even several poles but no electric cables on them and so on, in theory the village is "electricity access ready". The argument here being that whenever the lines are actually connected to the power grid, the electricity will be arriving, since "the poles are already installed".
http://www.business-standard.c...
The current ruling party has apparently learned that hiring social media IT teams tha spam social media with lies and exaggerations and feel-good promises is a good way of scoring votes, instead of needing to do any actual development work.