Continuing from where I left in my previous post, it is easy to imagine the kind of strain whatever little infrastructure and public services we have, will be put to when 600 million of Gen Next and their dependents start living in urban India. As it is, our public services are working at 1000% efficiency, despite highly inefficient, insensitive, and indifferent Government and its servants. Borrowing from the West, our media keeps publishing and hence promoting and giving undue publicity to how Gen Next is redifining modern lifestyle with late night hours and what not. The point we are missing is - what is the additional strain we are putting our meagre public resources to, in the pursuit of "modern lifestyle"?
Come to think of it, most of our villages get power supply for barely few hours in a day, while our cities and other urban centers are supplied most of the power. I may not be substantiating my arguments with adequate data, but when verified with data, the problem will not be any rosier than what is presented. The problem is accentuated by the fact that our transmission and distribution losses are very high. The power situation is further complicated by the unaccounted and illegal pilferage and theft that happens unabated both by individuals and industries. Even if we are able to cut our transmission & distribution losses by 25% and reduce pilferage by an additional 25%, thousands of villages can be electrified. Can we imagine how much new capacity addition we can avoid without adding new power generation units, simply by cutting T & D losses and reducing pilferage & theft? The need of the hour is once again strong Government action in the form of stringent penalties and criminal liability for indulging in power theft, both on the part of individuals as well as industries. Further, new investments have to be urgently made to improve T & D efficiencies. The investment required to bring new technology to improve T & D efficiencies will be definitely minimal as compared to the investment required to put a new power generation unit in place. The cost further increases when we consider the cost of land acquisition, displacement of local population, & the environmental damages. These costs in my opinion are irrevocable and to a large extent irreversible because of the time required to balance the environmental effects of putting a new plant and the enormous emotional trauma that the local population undergoes due to displacement and loss of land. In my opinion, this takes the economics of life in only one direction - VERTICAL. Our endeavor should be to make the economics of life affordable to the masses by reducing costs and increasing the scale & reach.
When sanitation and drainage systems in our cities is so abysmal, the state of affairs in our villages need no further elaboration. Unfortunately, our Government and the public servants do not consider that our brethren from villages also have the right to live a dignified life like their urban counterparts. Investment in good sanitation and drainage systems is actually an investment in good public health systems. Apart from the super speciality hospitals and primary healthcare centers, good sanitation & drainage systems and clean drinking water help in controlling most of the communicable diseases that claim thousands of life every year. Our policy makers do not consider investment in good sanitation & drainage systems, and taking clean drinking water to every single household in the country as a priority investment. Such a lackadaisical attitude toward investment in good public welfare systems only increases the economics of life multiple fold & thereby contrary to the endeavor of Government and public service institutions. If making the economics of life as affordable as possible to the masses is the endeavor of public service and policy making, then making available good sanitation and drainage systems along with access to clean drinking water by every household should be at the top of affordable economics of life.
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