Plan panel reform means costlier electricity, water

In the new reform agenda proposed by the Planning Commission, consumers may have to pay more for electricity and water, state government may get funds on conditional basis and there would be a new regulatory framework for underground water management on public trust doctrine. Chetan Chauhan reports.

Updated on: May 27, 2011, 21:42:33 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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In the new reform agenda proposed by the Planning Commission, consumers may have to pay more for electricity and water, state government may get funds on conditional basis and there would be a new regulatory framework for underground water management on public trust doctrine.

In a note prepared for the chief ministers, the plan panel has said that there will be lesser availability of funds for subsidies and development works except health and education. =93The Gross Budgetary Support (GDS) for other sectors will go down,=94 the panel said in the note.

For this to happen, the plan panel has proposed to grant loans to the state governments to execute Centrally Sponsored Schemes (CSS), which would be subsequently converted to grants on achievement of pre-specified outcome of targets.

Already, the model is in use for Accelerated Power Reforms Development Programme (APRDP), which the commission officials say has done well after introduction of the model. =93The model will be applicable for development works and not for programmes such as MGNREGA aimed at giving direct benefit to people,=94 he said.

This has been proposed because of lack of ownership of the CCS by the state governments and poor outcomes. The commission has also said that involvement of civil society in formulation of schemes should become a norm.

Further, the plan panel has constituted a committee under BK Chaturvedi, member in-charge of infrastructure, to recommend the schemes that can be scrapped. There are over 190 schemes and the plan panel wants just around 50 schemes for the Central government to execute.

But the biggest change the plan panel has suggested is in power and water sector, essential for India to achieve over 9 % GDP growth. =93Prices of electricity are not sufficiently flexible and regulators are being restrained from allowing periodic price increases,=94 the note says. The panel has also suggested incentives to make open access in energy price fixation a reality.

Increasing electricity generation will not be easy as coal production is a major constraint partly due to weak performance of Coal India and partly because of environment constraints. As a result, coal imports are expected to increase from 80 million tones to 250 million tones by end of 12th plan.

To ensure that everyone gets equal share of water, the commission will be pushing the Central government to promulgate a new groundwater law reflecting the principles of public doctrine and a new Water Management Law on the lines of the one in European Union.

The commission wants water recycling in urban and industrial areas to be made mandatory and having a National Water Commission may be put in place to monitor compliance with conditionalities imposed in clearance of important projects.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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