There are a few who look beyond the traditional paradigm of idolising political leadership and evaluate leaders based on what they deliver
Damu Tirkey is a passionate young man. Attached to a political social outfit, he works tirelessly for tribal welfare across 501 villages in Sundargarh district. Belonging to the Oram tribe, he takes immense pride in the fact that Prime Minister Narendra Modi got a village Pitamahal, a back of beyond habitation in Odisha’s Sundargarh district without even any access to roads, wired, and electrified. First time in 70 years, when I met him early this week, Tirkey pointed out to me three gram panchayats that he was aware of where electricity had reached for the first time since Independence — Chhatam, Budham and Pankadihi. While the first two villages belong to Rajarangpur block, the third one falls under Gurundia block, and these have been electrified under the Deendayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana (DDGUYJ). Little wonder global energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency (IEA), termed India’s electrification of every village as the greatest success story of 2018. “In particular, one of the greatest success stories in access to energy in 2018 was India completing the electrification of all of its villages,” said the agency’s latest World Energy Outlook 2018, adding that India was a “star performer” in terms of achieving a huge milestone of providing power to all her villages. In fact, countries, like Indonesia and Bangladesh, have also achieved commendable electrification rate of 95 per cent (up from 50 per cent in 2000), and 80 per cent (up from 20 per cent in 2000), respectively.
The IEA report said that over 120 million people worldwide gained access to electricity in 2017 alone. It further said that since 2000, more than 900 million people have gained access to electricity in developing countries in the Asian continent with 91 per cent of the region getting electrified by 2017 compared with 67 per cent in 2000. Of this, about 61 per cent of this progress has been reported from India only, making a “remarkable progress towards its target to deliver universal electricity access.” In keeping with his Independence Day promise of electrifying all Indian villages, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 28 this year, announced that the country had achieved its target of providing electricity to all its 597,464 census villages. Lauding the “political effort over the last five years” that significantly accelerated the progress of electrification, IEA report termed this milestone as “one of the greatest achievements in the history of energy.”
The Government had launched the ambitious Rs 75,893 crore Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana programme to connect India’s 18,452 unelectrified census villages, and on August 15, 2015, Modi had said that it would be achieved by May 2018, in 1000 days. While this was achieved ahead of time, the Government is now working to ensure that power lines are connected with major institutions and administrative centres of every village as well as every household in the country. The Pradhan Mantri Sahaj Bijli Har Ghar Yojana (Saubhagya) programme is designed to facilitate free electricity connections to about four crore households in rural and urban areas. The programme also aims to provide Solar Photovoltaic (PV) stand-alone system for unelectrified households located in remote and inaccessible villages/habitations, where grid extension is not feasible. The scheme was launched in October 2017, and so far, just about 64 per cent of the targeted three crore households have been electrified. About one crore households still remain to be electrified.
There are many States which have achieved 100 per cent household electrification, while some continue to make efforts in that direction. Arunachal Pradesh with 75 per cent, Meghalaya with 77 per cent, Uttar Pradesh with 80 per cent and Assam with 83 per cent figure at the bottom even as States like Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Bihar, Kerala, Telanagana, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir, Goa and Puducherry report 100 per cent household electrification. That many in India were deprived of this basic need seven decades after Independence certainly doesn’t tell a great story. The IEA also praised India’s success in enabling access to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) to the poor households. “In India, 50 million free LPG stoves and initial refills have been provided to poor households via Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana since 2015, and the Government has set a target of providing LPG connections to 80 million households by 2020,” it said.
Tirkey represents an aspirational and emerging New India that places a huge premium on progress and development. He looks beyond the traditional paradigm of idolising political leadership and evaluates leaders based on what they deliver. Unaware of the global applause that the DDGUYJ has earned, Tirkey said that people like him have begun to see the difference on the ground.
(The writer is a strategic communications professional)
