Rural Reality At the Start of 2018

[UlanBatori]

I need to answer the above question, in a good cause. 70% of India lives in the villages or forests, per the Usually Reliable Sources. OK, I will accept that. But what is the reality in these areas?
Depending on whom one asks, one gets vastly divergent answers. As one should because it is so vast. Here are some starting numbers:
* 30 States plus 6 Union Territories.
* Roughly 1 million Localities, of whom maybe 30 percent are urban.
* 700 million-plus rural residents.
* The average village apparently has about 1000 residents, so there are about 700,000 villages. A number that I have seen is 660,000. I don't think number of villages is increasing, if anything there may be consolidation, along with emptying/abandonment of some villages for instance in Andhra/ Telangana (per my sources).
* Average household in India has 4.3 residents. So there are roughly 250 million homes in India.

I am interested in testing the following hypotheses against anecodtal/ authoritative evidence, and in questioning the "authoritative" superstitions:
H1: All Indian villages have electric grid connection today.
H2: 40 million out of 250 million homes did not have power at the start of 2017 (source: PM Modi)
H3: All 250 million households have received connections as of end of 2017.
H4: Statistical surveys conducted by GOI/ agencies content themselves with obtaining large sample sizes (anyone can achieve large sample size in India) to claim 3rd-decimal accuracy, while literally missing the forest.
H5: Corollary to H4: Those who do not have access to power are not counted among those who do not have access to power.
H6: A large percentage (like 30? 50?) of villages with power connections, have little to no power flowing through.
H7: India has become/ will become within 2 years, a power-surplus nation (source: GOI)
H8: All Indian households will have natural-gas cooking (unless they have electric) by end of 2019.
H8(b) There is a Tooth Fairy.
H9: Most urban Indians know/care as much about any of the above, as the propaganda about Marie Antoinette claimed about her knowledge of French peasants.

Some articles:
Negative:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/in ... 776273.cms

Hyper-positive:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/o ... 287138.ece

All 39,073 villages of Bihar were now electrified, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna on Wednesday. He added that every household in the state would have a free power connection by the end of the next calendar year. The efforts in this regard were a part of Mr. Kumar’s seven resolves (“saat nischay”) of good governance. “We have come a long way since 2005 when we assumed power. Back then, small towns and villages had given up all hopes of getting power and even in the state capital, Patna, the electricity situation had left much to be desired,” Mr. Kumar said.

[UlanBatori]

To start the tamasha, here is a Beer-Reviewed Article from Scotchistan, published 2005:

India accounts for a third of the world’s population without access to electricity and about 40% of those without access to modern energy. Such a situation exists despite several initiatives and policies to support poor households. Alarmed by the gravity of the situation, the government has recently announced an ambitious programme of rural electrification. This paper looks into the energy access situation of India and argues that rural electrification alone is unlikely to resolve the energy access problem because of low penetration of electricity in the energy mix of the poor.

This paper claimed that 579.1million Indians did not have access to electricity in 2000. per the IEA, reporting in 2002. The paper listed average Indian electricity consumption as 393kWh per year.

Today's claimed figure for per capital consumption is 1122 kWh, so the situation has changed drastically inside 16 years. But how, and in what ways? Are the new numbers real? Has there been a 3-fold increase in power generation in India inside 16 years? Has this really reached down to the villages?

[UlanBatori]

A decade after Bhattacharya's paper, here is Balachandran, 2011:

In 2005, out of a rural population of 809 million, 364 million lacked access to electricity and 726 million to modern cooking fuels.
Deprivations are highest for poorest households with 93% using biomass and 62% lacking electricity.
Annual growth rates in energy access have declined from over 10% during 1990s to 4% in recent years.

[UlanBatori]

Half-decade later, someone claims to do statistical surveying right: See H4 b4 reading.
First they give a result from the census which is supposed to be fully representative and not leave things to chance:

According to the 2011 Census of India, 400 million people did not have an electricity connection at home and 800 million still relied on traditional biomass for their cooking needs. Most of these people live in rural households.

Since 2011 the population has increased by a pretty big jump, and I doubt very much that the rise was all in electrified homes.

To this day, statistically representative surveys that capture the different dimensions of energy access have been missing from India. To begin addressing the problem, we fielded a survey in 2014-2015 of 8,568 households in 714 villages in six energy-poor states of north India - Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal. (Jain et al. 2015b). The survey explores both rural electrification and access to cooking fuels. Besides describing the status of energy access, it also evaluates people´s subjective satisfaction with their situation and policy preferences. In this column, we provide highlights from our data analysis.

714 villages across 6 states. Seems vast and no doubt took hard work, but this is still a really tiny percentage. More to the point, what is the basis for claiming that this is a REPRESENTATIVE sample? Who knows what is representative, unless there is a systematic visiting of every village to determine realities?

But the data presented from the surveys are deeply troubling.

Access to electricity
Figure 1 summarises the key findings with respect to access to household electricity. We group households into four tiers based on their access to electricity. Households in Tier 0 either have no electricity at all or a connection of very low quality, typically with fewer than four hours of supply per day. Households in Tier 1 have basic lighting and communication technologies, typically with 4-8 hours of supply. Households in Tier 2 have connections which can support fans, televisions or computers, with up to 20 hours of supply. Households in Tier 3 have a modern electricity connection, with the ability to use all modern appliances, and close to 24 hours of supply per day.

As Figure 1 shows, a clear majority of households across the six states have very limited electricity access.

That is despite:

Although rural electrification rates are relatively high across the states, especially when off-grid technologies are also considered, the overall quality of electricity supply remains very poor.

The source for their data is their own 2015 report, presumably based on realities seen as of mid 2014 when the NaMoRajya began

Interesting to note that 79% of households in rural Bihar were rated "Tier 0" in electricity access. So did Nitish Kumar's govt really change that reality inside 3 years and bring full electrification to all homes in Bihar by the end of 2017?

[Rahul M]

the thing is, if there's a power connection a.k.a electric pole in the village it considered connected to the grid, even if no-one in the village has opted for it. there are other problems of misuse, in villages where govt charges a fixed nominal amount per month for electricity, people use it for anything for everything, even for a bit of heat in winter months by lighting 5 100W bulbs. no one ever switches their lights off.

[UlanBatori]

Slightly OT (main purpose of the thread is to collect hard data and reason out conclusions). May be premature to jump to conclusions, but maybe I can add Hypothesis
H11: One thing I am learning is that Indian villages are regarded as monolithic entities by the government, Bollywood and everyone else. And with good reason. They seem to have established "netaship" and little room for individual enterprise except by the Chosen Munnas of the Village Chief (or incoming Goonda gang). So one change that is needed is the ability to reach (inwards and outwards) every citizen as an independent free citizen, free of the clutches of the netaship. But that presumes a level of education superior to downtown LaHore, which may be a long time coming.

OTOH, while this model exists, good NGOs can achieve small results by persistent effort.

[Supratik]

To add to what Rahul said when the govt says "village electrified" it just means it is connected to the grid. In rural WB it was common to see electrical poles without wires. It just means electricity can be delivered to the village now. When the govt says power surplus it means it is able to meet the demand. However, now that the villages are connected the problem is two fold i.e. power evacuation and ability to purchase the available power. Due to faulty policies the state power boards had gone belly-up. Uday scheme has attempted to resurrect the state power boards to health although it is still an ongoing process. Ability to evacuate power by the boards, technical and technological capacity to evacuate power, minimization of T&D losses and power theft leading to financial viability are some of the things that will take some more time to fix provided the states want to fix it. Finally, the ability to purchase power by the consumer will be an issue that will take more time. So even though every village is electrified and surplus power is available millions of Indians will remain partly or fully without power till all these issues are fixed.

[VKumar]

I need to answer the above question, in a good cause. 70% of India lives in the villages or forests, per the Usually Reliable Sources. OK, I will accept that. But what is the reality in these areas?
Depending on whom one asks, one gets vastly divergent answers. As one should because it is so vast. Here are some starting numbers:
* 30 States plus 6 Union Territories.
* Roughly 1 million Localities, of whom maybe 30 percent are urban.
* 700 million-plus rural residents.
* The average village apparently has about 1000 residents, so there are about 700,000 villages. A number that I have seen is 660,000. I don't think number of villages is increasing, if anything there may be consolidation, along with emptying/abandonment of some villages for instance in Andhra/ Telangana (per my sources).
* Average household in India has 4.3 residents. So there are roughly 250 million homes in India.

I am interested in testing the following hypotheses against anecodtal/ authoritative evidence, and in questioning the "authoritative" superstitions:
H1: All Indian villages have electric grid connection today.
H2: 40 million out of 250 million homes did not have power at the start of 2017 (source: PM Modi)
H3: All 250 million households have received connections as of end of 2017.
H4: Statistical surveys conducted by GOI/ agencies content themselves with obtaining large sample sizes (anyone can achieve large sample size in India) to claim 3rd-decimal accuracy, while literally missing the forest.
H5: Corollary to H4: Those who do not have access to power are not counted among those who do not have access to power.
H6: A large percentage (like 30? 50?) of villages with power connections, have little to no power flowing through.
H7: India has become/ will become within 2 years, a power-surplus nation (source: GOI)
H8: All Indian households will have natural-gas cooking (unless they have electric) by end of 2019.
H8(b) There is a Tooth Fairy.
H9: Most urban Indians know/care as much about any of the above, as the propaganda about Marie Antoinette claimed about her knowledge of French peasants.

Some articles:
Negative:
https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/in ... 776273.cms

Hyper-positive:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/o ... 287138.ece

All 39,073 villages of Bihar were now electrified, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said in Patna on Wednesday. He added that every household in the state would have a free power connection by the end of the next calendar year. The efforts in this regard were a part of Mr. Kumar’s seven resolves (“saat nischay”) of good governance. “We have come a long way since 2005 when we assumed power. Back then, small towns and villages had given up all hopes of getting power and even in the state capital, Patna, the electricity situation had left much to be desired,” Mr. Kumar said.

The same questions can be asked about LPG, Roads, Primary schools, Primary health center's, mobile phone towers, toilets, potable water etc.

Once we're done with electricity, let's gather other data.

[disha]

Are we missing the forest for the trees on rural electrification?

One cannot electrify households *if* the village or the kasba or the hamlet itself is not electrified!

And just because all villages in a state are electrified does not mean all households in that village are electrified.

Here are two ways to report the above:

1. In 2 Years, BJP Govt Electrified 13,523 Villages; Of These, Only 8% Were Completely Electrified: http://www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/i ... fied-83376

As many as 73% of the 18,452 villages that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government identified for electrification in 2015 now have power supply, but only 8% of these villages had all their households electrified, according to the government’s own data.

As of May 25, 2017, 13,523 villages have been electrified, but 100% household connectivity has been achieved in only 1,089 villages, according to data in the power ministry’s Grameen Vidyutikaran (GARV) dashboard.

Besides, 25% (45 million) of rural households across the country still have no electricity. In Uttar Pradesh, Nagaland, Jharkhand and Bihar, fewer than 50% of rural households have electricity, three years after the BJP was sworn in at the Centre having promised “electricity for all”

^Parts of the above article is pure political motivated farts and rona-dhona.

Prior to 2014, several 1000s of villages never had seen electricity at their door step. And GOI's own statistic is twisted to make a non-sensical statement.

2. First goal is to eliminate any "unelectrified villages". Here is the list: https://visualize.data.gov.in/?inst=a19 ... 15ca651898 of unelectrified villages. Mostly in NE (assam/mizoram/...).

Key point:

A village would be declared as electrified if:

1) Basic infrastructure such as Distribution Transformer and Distribution lines are provided in the inhabited locality as well as the Dalit Basti/ hamlet where it exists. (For electrification through Non Conventional Energy Sources a Distribution transformer may not be necessary).

2) Electricity is provided to public places like Schools, Panchayat Office, Health Centres, Dispensaries, Community centers etc. and

3) the number of households electrified should be at least 10% of the total number of households in the village. The data contains details on the progress made towards village electrification for the month. The detail includes the cumulative achievement, percentage of villages electrified along with the number of unelectrified villages.

The next step is to get the number of households electrified. This is where state initiatives help, like free connection.

[disha]

Of course, urbanites who believe in tooth-fairy will make such statements:

“The government’s definition of an electrified village doesn’t make sense,” said Aruna Kumarakandath, who leads renewable energy research at New Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment, a non-profit public advocacy organization. “How can we say a village is electrified if 90 percent of homes don’t get power?”

Here is how the above person (Aruna K) got it wrong. The definition is about "electrified village" and not about "household electrification". The later can only come after former.

A better article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features ... lectricity

It will answer in one info graph some of the questions which dear yak herder is searching about.

[UlanBatori]

That govt site is awesome. Thanks. But it raises a small question. The grand total of villages is shown as under 598,000. An impressive 98+ percent of those are "electrified".
Everywhere else I have seen the number 660,000 - 700,000. Which makes sense for an average of 1000 persons per village, which also seems anecdotally true. So what happened to 10 percent of villages? Completely lost in the census?
IOW, if the power grid does not reach a village, it is simply not counted as a village?

On the issue of electrified village vs. people with access to electricity, one might point out that any village where there has been a thunderstorm is also an "electrifed village"... Ultimately, the question is access to electricity. If the Zamindar's mansion has electricity, that makes the "village electrified". But Appu Abdul and Abbu still have no access to electricity.

Arguing whether a village is "100% electrified" is non-productive. It hides the fact that the concern is whether "10% electrified" is passed off as ""electrified".

OK, here a list of villages in India, per the 2011 census. The total is 649,481.

Why does the govt. site show only 597464? Would it be because they don't want to acknowledge the 52,017 which would ruin their statistics? That would be 52 million people missing....

[UlanBatori]

dishaji: That infographic (despite acknowleding only 71% rural households electrified) shows TN as "91-100% household electrified". And coconut palms grow in Ulan Bator.
The reality is demonstrably a bit dimmer. That one is a clear known fact.

[UlanBatori]

Re: Missing 52000 villages: I downloaded the actual census data and compared. Apparently the census showed 43000+ villages to be uninhabited. I don't know what that means: people just left these and moved away? Plus, the number of villages seem to have declined because villages that exceed 5000 residents may be called towns.
So net is that India today has around 597,000 villages. Round it off to 600,000.

[UlanBatori]

Sorry, I did not see the "Know Ur India" dhaga. Has much better gyan on similar topics, plus I have answered the question that bothered me. Village electrification (a wire reaching every village) is essentially 100%. But 50% of rural residents have no access to electric or any other power, and no one knows just how many (maybe they don't respond on WhatsApp, duh!)

But the Electrified Villages don't penetrate the tribal areas, and many villages inhabited by so-called "Dalits" are simply ignored. This is India's shame, it must be ended swiftly. Thanks for ur patience.

IB4TL

[A_Gupta]

http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-indi ... story.html
Inside India's epic effort to bring electricity to millions of people for the first time.

[UlanBatori]

Thanks for posting that - a really uplifting story, for once, in the LATimes. So it appears to be true that there is real change: Inside a decade the 300 million without power got reduced to X million without power, X<<300. Someone started using their brains and the Rural Electrification Corp. has been doing the really tough work.
They need to get into the tribal areas in a big way.
But all in all, we are living in an age of epic change, positive change, in India!!!!

[SBajwa]

Sarpanch of this village in Punjab got inspired from villages in Gujarat when he took his combine there.
Does the same in Punjab

[SBajwa]

How about the villages where they are using Solar power run DC devices? are those considered electrified or not?

[SBajwa]

http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/haryan ... 80130.html

Deepender Deswal

Tribune News Service

Hisar, April 26
The tomato growers in Bhiwani and Charkhi Dadri are forced to dump their produce on the roads in the absence of adequate prices in the vegetable markets. The farmers are not getting a good price for tomatos even after the state government has introduced the Bhavanter Bharpay Yojana (BBY) to ensure a better price for vegetables and fruits.

Farmers locked the main gates of the vegetable market in Charkhi Dadri on Thursday alleging that the market committee officials were hand in glove with the arhtiyas who were forcing them to sell their produce as low as Re 1 per kg.

Ajay Singh Tomar, DC, Charkhi Dadri, has suspended the auction recorder of the market committee and also recommended suspension of the market committee secretary for their failure to ensure implementation of Bhavanter scheme.

Farmers Jai Bhagwan and Ram Narayan, brought their tomato produce at the Charkhi Dadri vegetable market on Thursday as per the scheme that they must be ensured a price of Rs 4 per kg for the tomato produce.

Farmers have grown tomatoes on 1,300 acres of land in the district. Nitin Jangu, pradhan of the vegetable market, alleged that the market committee officials were behaving in a discriminatory manner with the arhtiyas as they were providing the J-form to a selected few only.

“Thus, farmers and a few arhtiyas are being harassed by the officials,” he alleged.

Former Minister Satpal Sangwal, however, visited the mandi and held the state government responsible for harassing the farmers in the name of bhavanter scheme.

In Bhiwani, vegetable farmers met Congress Legislative Party leader Kiran Choudhary on Wednesday and alleged that they were forced to dump their produce in open. They alleged that the subsidised seeds of tomatos were of poor quality which resulted in poor fruit as well.

Ramesh, a farmer, said, “We adopted the state government’s horticulture scheme and got the seeds at subsidised rates. But, there are no takers.” Kiran Choudhary has demanded an inquiry into the matter.

[UlanBatori]

Back to this thread BECAUSE...
India is going downhill again - at the whim of the Oil Lobby.The rupee is again on its way down to compete with the Pakistani rupee. Economy is heading down, prices are heading up - and the WORST impact will be on the poorest people.
How many times have we seen this? But when we ask people to join in and help to get this curse off our backs, all I see is people sitting around picking their {noses}.

I think the electricity question is pretty-much answered above: most villages have a wire or two, but most residents don't have the resources to get a regular power connection and keep paying for it. This is because there is so little business/ enterprise in the villages, and there is no Big Company/Guvrmand to provide massive employment unlike the urban areas.

That article about tomato-growers is pathetic. If there was a canning operation in the neighborhood, the tomatoes would have a backup customer who would convert the tomatoes to sauce or canned food and keep it from going bad. But that takes energy and investment and planning, none of which seems to be done. It's all guvrmand "schemes".

But my interest is in finding ppl who are actually committed to making a difference. Starting with getting solar electricity to the school, then teaching ppl to install the systems (and make a living out of that), then moving to other renewable energy, also learningto USE the electricity to make money instead of just lighting.. and so on.

Maybe if 1 in 100,000 Indians gave a damn, there would be 10,000 such people, which is enough.