the doomed power sector

text of the letter sent to the press:

I refer to the reported shutting down of some of the units of the Raichur Thermal Power Station for want of coal, though the Karnataka Power Corporation would like to make us believe that it is all part of its annual maintenance exercise.

With the ESCOMs recording losses at an average 40% perennially, equivalent to some Rs 3,000 crores per annum, things have been in total dis-array up and down the supply chain in this critical sector from long. It is therefore a total surprise that the entire system has not just collapsed altogether all this while. Now, however, with the quantums involved getting larger by the day, such a scenario seems quite imminent.

Indeed the functioning of the entire power sector in the state, as also most of the country, is along a model that certainly cannot be described as business by any reckoning. The normal rules just don't apply here. Obviously, the powers that be prefer it this way!