Prakash Nayak, Chairman, The IET Power Engineers Panel
We have lived with anxiety “hoping for better life” for many years, it is time for change, and people’s mandates have shown this with absolute clarity. What is expected is walk the talk, we have seen and heard many jargons, it is an overdose, show us the results. What country needs is not free food, not free Power, not free TV etc but jobs.All this can only happen if full focus and drive is on development with clear objective.Let me address what we expect from government for the Power sector.
We need a magic wand to convert the bleeding sector to profitable one. The government is needed to bring in investment/finance model to revive the sector with escrow account etc. as no investor is eager to invest in them, andfix the team with clear accountability and responsibility for the new finance model; otherwise it will be like an old wine in new bottle.
There are discussions on amendment to Electricity Bill, bringing more of the renewable energy, making the renewable power obligation mandatoryfor consumer as well as the renewable generating company. It is the right time now to take out subsidy schemes on renewable as the power generation from solar is already at par with power generated from Fossil power; actually this scheme is only delaying the large scale implementation. The process is slow and takes a lot of time and efforts.
Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’, are the new government’s major projects. Our objective in both should have been large scaleemployment opportunities, thus inclusive growth and addressing social issues which are cropping up due to large scale unemployed minds. I am not sure how they intend to go further when it comes to “Make in India”. We cannot compete with China in Manufacturing, what we can surely competewith them and rest of the world is in System Engineering and Product Design, Design Engineering. Indians are involved in many projects outside India and delivering tremendous value. Thus, the main focus should be on engineering, product development than just manufacturing. Creating an ecosystem around this should be the responsibility of Government and could be a part of the budget.
Last point I would like to make it on the Fossil Fuel, we have no option but to live with it few more years as large scale capacity enhancement could only come from that. So the need of the hour is strategy, direction and regulatory mechanism in assigning the coal blocks and also making the Generating Companies responsible with strict guidelines and penalties if they exceed beyond acceptable pollution levels. When rest of world can use technologies why not India adopts them.
