The politics of power: Electricity reform in India

Kelli L. Joseph

Energy Policy, 2010, vol. 38, issue 1, 503-511

Abstract: Ongoing theft, corruption, and an artificially decreased pricing structure have made it nearly impossible for the state utilities in India to improve power service. As a result, industrial consumers across India exit the state-run system and rely on their own on-site power generation in order to ensure a consistent and reliable source of electricity. The 2003 Electricity Act encourages further power production from these captive plants through its open access clause. By encouraging the growth of these captive power plants, politicians in India set up a dual-track economy, whereby state-run and market-run production exist side-by-side. This strategy allows politicians to encourage private sector involvement in the electricity market, without jeopardizing the support of key political constituencies at the state level.

Keywords: India; Electricity; Captive; power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (50)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(09)00724-1
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:1:p:503-511

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().