The Hindu : Karnataka News : `Privatisation of power sector would have been a disaster'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 17, 2004

Karnataka

Karnataka

`Privatisation of power sector would have been a disaster'

By Divya Sreedharan

BANGALORE, MAY 16. Is the State Government leaning towards privatising, rather than reforming, its power sector? The Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) Chairman, Philipose Mathai, thinks so. The "hurry to privatise at the behest of the World Bank and the advice of the foreign consultants" would have landed the State and the sector in disaster, Mr. Mathai told The Hindu .

Making it clear that these were his personal views after four and a half years as the Chairman of the KERC, Mr. Mathai stressed that reforms were essential for the sector. "But they must first touch the people and benefit the consumers."

And just how good was the advice given by the consultants? According to Mr Mathai, "One of the `expert consultants' advising the State Government is reportedly now doing some entertainment/catering business in Bangkok."

Further, Mr. Mathai said the reported move to hand over power supply in Bangalore to big companies such as Reliance had not come to the KERC's notice at all.

"In any such effort, the commission will have to play its impartial and important role, but people should know the details of such moves in full, with all its implications."

Recently, The Hindu had written about the fate of reforms after the elections. In that article, a senior Government official was quoted as saying, "Reforms need to be looked at rationally because there is no emotion in statecraft." While Mr. Mathai agreed that reforms had to be rational, they could not be ruthless either. "The power sector affects the lives and thereby, the livelihood, of millions of people. So reforms must be implemented with compassion," he said.

The KERC, he said, had always maintained that justice was not being done to the farmers. "We have pointed out often that farmers do not get even three hours of uninterrupted power a day. But we have been ignored."

The recommendations of the KERC advisory committee, especially the views of members representing farmers, had often gone unacknowledged by the Government, he said.

In fact, the KERC was yet to allow the recent `own your transformer' scheme that Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Ltd. (KPTCL) introduced towards the end of the Krishna Government's rule. The `half-baked scheme' would have resulted in the purchase of lakhs of transformers at enormous cost, and would not have benefited the farmers, he said. "Most farmers are too poor to afford these transformers anyway," he pointed out.

Mr. Mathai asserted, "Any reform cannot and shall not overlook the concerns of the poor, especially the rural farmers. They have to get their due."

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