Consider yourself blessed…
Here are some factoids to jolt you out of your Sunday complacency*:
- 52% of rural households have no domestic power connection
- 20% of rural habitations must walk for miles to obtain safe drinking water – and have access to it only for a few hours a day for much of the year
- The average village is two kilometers away from an all-weather road
When was the last time you walked two kilometers in the heat and dust of rural India?
Image courtesy and Copyright Kailash Mittal
* From a McKinsey Quarterly article on Nurturing entrepreneurship in India’s villages, Nov 2008
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Somewhat related post: “A plea for sanitation†– excerpts
What this is is a terrible shame and a waste of 60 years. We as citizens should hold the government accountable and responsible. I wonder if we can sue the government for non-performance. (I am seriously considering taking a public interest litigation against Chennai corporation for not collecting the garbage–can I do this?)
Excellent post! I really enjoyed reading it. I will be back for more!
Sincerely,
Ankita
@Shantanu,
Where is the GAO or Govt. Accoutability Organization? Every tax payer rupee spent should be accountable. But unfortunately it is not. The day it is, India will bloom.
Harapriya, Ankita and DD: Thanks for your comments.
***
@ Harapriya: I am not sure if you can take a PIL against Chennai corporation but you can surely file an RTI to find out whose responsibility is it and how much money has been spent on garbage collection.
***
DD: “Every tax payer rupee spent should be accountable” Agree whole-heartedly…I wonder whether this falls under the ambit of Audits/Accounts…Does anyone know if Audit departments can take suo-moto notice of government expenditure?
Here is a recent article by Tavleen Singh on the importance of primary education.
She discusses private public partnerships. These only seem to work in India if the government gets out of the actual day to day running of the institutions and provides broad guidelines and acts as an overseer who only steps in when there is wrongdoing.
I am reminded of the garbage collecting saga of Chennai. During a former administration (I think Jayalalitha’s) a Singapore company was entrusted with it. It did a fairly good job and we didn’t see the piles of garbage on the streets. However the present administration decided to change the companies and chose a Columbian one. The result is that the whole place is one big garbage dump. This can actually be solved by giving it to a private company and let them collect fees for collection. There can also be a fine for littering which can go to the government–that way the government would also make money.
What is surprising in India is that even the most simple solutions are rarely implemented. Every thing is so complicated involving so much paper work and running after some stupid government official. Since the government is so inefficient, maybe it should just downsize. After all, if the government can spend crores on sending people on pilgrimages, it seems that it has enough money to make sure that there is a school, hospital and court house in every village in India.
Harapriya,
This is not the first time people are discussing about primary education. It has rarely come out of the discussion rooms . But unfortunately our polity finds voice in reservations rather than improving primary education for 2 reasons.
1. vote bank
2. keep the ignorant people ignorant and uneducated so that they won’t start asking questions.
One of the reasons why 1946 navy mutiny happened was for the same reason that a major chunk of indians in the british army had moderate education and they realized the british game plan.
On the HRD, taking that initiative. I don’t think that the HRD has so much of jurisdiction. It has to come from the state governments.
All the paper work is a simple way to frustrate people and extort money for speedy closure of issues by the officials. 🙂
@ Harapriya/ Harish: The government should downsize – spot on.
That will solve 75% of India’s problems.
Dear Shantanu,
1. Do you know under the the “Pradhan Mantri Gramin Sadak Yojna” – a significant number of villages in MP have beautiful motorable roads – even better than the highways?
2. The Congress govt. in MP was responsible for starting a scheme free “Ek Batti Connection” for slum dwellers and other people below the Poverty Line. The people misused it to the maximum by evening running Electric stoves, TVs, and, everything on that connection. The easiest way to get light in a house still remains by just putting a wire on a naked electric line – the one and only reason for most power companies being in heavy losses.
@Ajay. I have always wondered if it is possible to bring electicity to all villages in India using solar power. Could every village in India be self sufficient in power generation if an NGO went around putting up solar panels and teaching the villagers how to use them. I know that there are entire villages in Germany which do this and we in India definitely get more sunlight .
Dear Harapriya,
I have been also often been thinking about why electricity is not there in all the villages of the country, and, the only reason that I come across (besides adequate power generation) is the high distribution costs of electricity from the source of generation. I think an NGO or any organization can definitely take up bringing electricity to various villages, small towns and even uninterrupted power supply to large colonies and industrial units in medium and large cities, by-
a. Setting up solar panels where there is no dearth of sunlight.
b. Use of small and medium sized wind-power generation plants to generate electricity in specially the himalayan and the coastal region of the country.
c. Hydro-electricity generation in villages specially in the east, north and north-eastern India – by just diverting the flow of water in small streams and water-falls. I have seen numerous villages doing such modifications to even run a small sized “atta chakki”.
There are numerous villages ready to spend the money in what is called “Jan Bhagidari”. But, there is not much being done. We still keep on talking about the “Nuclear Deal” for our power requirements.
@Ajay: Would tend to dsagree with your comment here..
I have been to numerous villages in India (hills and plains both). As far as I know, in the hilly states (Uttaranchal and Himachal Pradesh), they have surplus power. Thanks to various hydro power projects, most villages have 24 hr electricity.
In remote villages of plain (example, villages in Satpura forest (MP), there is good adoption of solar batteries. In fact, they are completely dependent on solar power for their electricity needs. The major challenge with solar panels is they are very expensive and have very high maintenance costs associated with them.
Ajay and PS: I think the reality lies somewhere in between…There is no doubt about a massive market opportunity in providing cheap power to rural areas – even if only for a few hours every day…
I feel deeply sad about the enormous loss of productivity due to lack of power and how entire communities are held back from development because of this one problem.
@ comment / reply at 4 above:
the website of the Government auditor is
http://www.cag.gov.in/
rgds/sridhar