The "power" Game continues in MP | N.D.Sharma

Published on 27-02-2008 In National

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The "power" Game continues in MP

It's the same story again in Madhya Pradesh. As the Assembly elections approach, the politicians – those in power as well as those aspiring for it --get sympathetic to the farmers' cause, particularly about their perennial problems with the electricity bills. Shivraj Singh Chauhan has just announced waiver of the pending penalty on electricity bills of farmers and payment of fifty percent of their pending electricity bills. All the sops announced by the chief minister at a farmers' rally will cost the exchequer --- that is, if implemented –- a whopping sum of Rs. 5600 crore.

The problems did not crop up suddenly, nor was the government unaware of these. The farmers had been agitating, through peaceful and not so peaceful means, all these years. According to the Kisan Vikas Manch, an organisation of the farmers, their major problems had been exceedingly high power tariff for irrigation (compared to other States) and inadequate and erratic supply of electricity. Inflated electricity bills had been the most persistent complaint of the farmers. There was no one in the government to listen to them in the past four years.

When did today's ruling party (that is, the BJP) become aware of these and other grievances of the farmers? Well before it had really assumed power. The BJP had wooed the farmers during the 2003 Assembly election campaign by highlighting their problems, sympathising with them and promising redress of their grievances if it came to power. Remember Uma Bharati's slogan of providing BSP (Bijli, sadak, paani)?

Not that the previous government had done better. Digvijay Singh, who headed the Congress government for two consecutive terms, was equally artful (to put it mildly) on the farmers' issues. The Digvijay Singh government faced trouble on the farmers' electricity dues from none but a Congress MLA, Kalpana Parulekar. She had organised an agitation for over a year and courted arrest a few times, for waiving the electricity dues of farmers, as the government was not able to ensure power supply when the farmers badly needed it. She had even given a call to the farmers not to pay the dues and the farmers were heeding her. She had spent a total of four months in jail.

Parulekar claimed that Digvijay Singh had been behaving like a dictator, not heeding to the party or even the party MLAs. His theory was, according to her, that if Lalu Prasad Yadav could repeatedly come back to power without doing anything in his State, so could he. Lalu Prasad Yadav was at least concerned about the poor and had a strong cadre behind him while Singh had no one behind him, Parulekar said.

Parulekar was fighting virtually single-handedly, without a viable organisation behind her. Those in the Congress, who had sympathy with her cause, were afraid to lend their support to her openly. Parulekar's agitation, however, attracted the attention of Uma Bharati when she was assigned by the BJP leadership the task of organising the campaign for the Assembly election. She also called upon the farmers not to pay the power dues and declared that the BJP, if it came to power, would waive the dues. After that, every BJP leader in the State was making promises to the farmers.

Seeing the power (the political power) slipping out of his hands, Digvijay Singh also woke up belatedly to the problem.

His cabinet took the decision that some 8.6 lakh farmers, who had been using up to 5 horse power pumps for irrigation, were no more required to pay basic charges for power for the period from January 1,2001 to December 31,2003. The surcharge levied on this section was also waived. The payments already made by the farmers were to be treated as advance and adjusted against their electricity dues occurring after January 1,2004.

Reversing its earlier decision, the government had also decided to waive for the period from January 1,2001 to December 31,2003 the electricity dues of the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and those living below the poverty line (BPL).

However, by the time Digvijay Singh announced these decisions, the election code of conduct had already become operational in the State. The Election Commission promptly declared that the decision of the Madhya Pradesh government to give free electricity to certain sections of the people amounted to a violation of model code of conduct.

In any case, it was Digvijay Singh's desperate act. The Congress had promised free electricity to various sections of the people in its 1993 election manifesto and it was enforced soon after Digvijay Singh became chief minister in December 1993. The experience of the government in this respect had, however, been disastrous. The White Paper on the Status of Power Sector brought out by the government in June 2003, observed that supply of free power in 1994 led to an unexpected spurt in demand in the State. "Wasteful consumption increased, as did the tendency to camouflage theft by booking under free supply". So, the government discontinued free power supply in 2001 to all except SC/ST consumers living below the poverty line.

Digvijay Singh's decision was not dictated by any economic sense. He had been promised loans to the tune of Rs 1650 crore by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a couple of other agencies for improving the transmission and distribution (T&D) system in the State and one of their conditions was to plug the loopholes. So, Digvijay Singh was under pressure to stop the free (or at concessional rates) electricity supply to various sections, which, though, formed only a small fraction of the T&D losses. There was never a serious move, either during Digvijay Singh's time or thereafter, to take action against the big or influential consumers, who were major defaulters. The outstanding against them last year stood at over Rs 3,700 crore.

The power losses in Madhya Pradesh through theft and faulty transmission/distribution channels doubled during Digvijay Singh's ten-year governance and have not abated since. These losses were 22.68 per cent in April 1993 (a few months before Digvijay Singh formed the Congress government) and 44 per cent about the time of his leaving. These are now in the vicinity of 47 per cent.

Chauhan has announced several concessions in power tariff for farmers. However, an interesting offer made by him was that the farmers would, from April onwards, be issued electricity bills twice a year, which they would be expected to pay in advance. He, though, did not say that his government would guarantee supply of electricity against the bills paid in advance.

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