Agri subsidies were started with the intention of helping out the farmer financially. However, in today's day and age, these subsidies are putting a phenomenal strain on the existing infrastructure we have in our country. Additionally, people forget the value of a resource when it comes by free. Personally, I am not a big fan of subsidies like free power for precisely the reasons elaborated in the article below..
There has been a change of guard at the power
ministry and Jyotiraditya Scindia, the new man in charge, has described
his task as daunting. To simplify the many complexities, it's worth
keeping in mind an adage that's particularly apt for rural India:
Nothing is more expensive than no power.
While on one hand there
are thousands of villages that still remain to be electrified, on the
other even the ones that have been electrified, get power for a mere
four to five hours per day, and that too mostly at night time.
The stark reality is that due to the short-sightedness of our
policymakers and the political class, we are unable to mobi-lise the
national consensus needed to do away with subsidised power to the
agricul-tural sector. The decision-makers fail to realise that more than
subsidies, it is round-the-clock and quality power supply that holds
the potential to completely transform life in rural India.
It is
worthwhile to mention here that agriculture, which accounts for over
25% of the electricity consumption, contributes to a mere 5% of the
revenue. Inadequate tariffs on one hand and high technical and
commercial losses on the other have completely destroyed the financial
health of all state utilities.
Aggregate loss in the year 2012
is estimated at a whopping Rs 1.2 lakh crore (1.5% of GDP). This poor
financial health has resulted in inadequate investment in the entire
generation, transmission, distribution value chain - which in turn has
impacted the overall quality and reliability of the supply.