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All Indian Villages Now Have Access To Electricity (indiatimes.com)

Posted by msmash on from the moving-forward dept.

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.

11 of 108 comments (clear)

  1. Next Step by mentil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Today: electricity. Tomorrow: toilets!

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
    1. Re:Next Step by gopla · · Score: 5, Interesting

      In two words you have captured the essential part of this news. It is not only toilets tomorrow but also cooking gas for all liberating women from smoke and related health issues. Next is moving the mass of people to formal banking, with potential change over less cash economy.

      The impact of this will be felt worldwide in the next 10 years. If USA is exhausted of Indian coders when India has just 40 % toilet coverage, 60 % electricity access and less than 50 % families with a bank account, imagine the scenario 10 years from now with 100 % population having middle class facilities. India is massively cleaning up its streets and rivers. Building road and rail infrastructure.

      It is going through the phase which China went through three decades ago.

    2. Re: Next Step by WindBourne · · Score: 2

      Don't laugh. Some of my in-laws are in India setting up hand washing stations by the community toilets. They developed and manufacture an inexpensive setup that is also low water use. Sanitation remains a serious issue for villagers. Many children die in India from diarrhea due to lack of sanitation.

      --
      I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    3. Re:Next Step by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    4. Re:Next Step by gopla · · Score: 2

      True about Bangladesh. I also agree that the reason about open defecation may also be cultural. Yet, Indians are more pragmatic than what you think. Until now there was no focused effort to address this problem. Not any more. Just like this 1000 day target to electrify all villages, the target to get all villages and cities open defecation free is Oct. 2019. It is progressing well as far as I can tell.

      Changes in Indian society occur at much faster rate than you can imagine. Indians are not zealots, can adopt quickly and see the logic. What Indians lack is ability to put efforts in a single minded manner like Chinese. There are always hundreds of opinion and each one pulling in different direction. By some random circumstances there is one decade every century where you see dramatic positive changes, other wise languishing in whatever state the previous cycle left them. This has been the story of India since last 1000 years.

      In previous two cycles we eradicated Sati and Untouchability. Exceptions are still seen even today, but on the whole these are gone. Now it is time for toilets.

    5. Re:Next Step by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      Indians are not zealots, can adopt quickly and see the logic

      Of course aside from religion, where the word "zealot" actually comes from.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
  2. Nothing to do with PM by asvravi · · Score: 3, Informative

    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!

    1. Re:Nothing to do with PM by Calydor · · Score: 2

      Maybe because those last 4% were extremely hard to get to?

      I admittedly have no idea about India's infrastructure or finer geography, the locations of their villages etc., but compare it to coding: You'll crank out 95% of a program fast, going through all the easy sections like buttons doing what they say they should and so on, and then you'll spend forever on the last 5% to make sure everything works -together-.

      --
      -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
    2. Re:Nothing to do with PM by gopla · · Score: 2

      You are right in your assessment. The last few villages were tough. They were located in dense forests or in higher altitudes of himalay. Some were even in the places affected by terrorism.

      See for example this case. Chhattisgarh's Maoist-hit village gets electricity after 15 years. . The light vanished from the Chintalnar village when Maoists, in a bid to disrupt the development activities in the district, uprooted electricity poles. Bringing back electricity to such villages was a tough job. I am happy it is done.

      However, as the summary mention, electrification of a village just means public places are electrified. The next job is to provide electricity to all and ensure 24x7 supply. This part is what you have said :

      spend forever on the last 5% to make sure everything works -together-

    3. Re:Nothing to do with PM by FalcDot · · Score: 2

      First of all, of course a project like this slows down near the end. The last few villages are more than likely the most difficult to reach.

      Second of all, at least the PM didn't announce that those last remaining villages weren't worth the effort.

  3. definition of "electricity access ready" by thej1nx · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.