New Delhi Power Privatisation And How It Has Worked Out

No point in privatising if it doesn't help consumers 

Nigeria is reportedly so impressed with India's - and more specifically, Delhi's - model of privatisation of power distribution that it wants to adopt the Delhi model while selling off its own state-owned power generation and distribution businesses. 

... One wonders whether the Nigerian authorities have had a chance to actually interact with the beneficiaries of power reforms - Delhi's electricity consumers - before coming to the conclusion that the Delhi model was the best one to follow. 

...One also wonders whether Nigerian Regulatory Commission and the Bureau of Public Enterprises of Nigeria, the two government bodies which will be involved with the African nation's power privatisation process, have had a chance to go through the latest report of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), which has lambasted the Delhi government for rising power shortages and a mounting power deficit, subsequent to privatisation. 

There have been many demands raised by consumer groups, the latest by the Residents Welfare Associations (RWAs) of the capital, for an independent and neutral audit of the accounts of the power distribution companies. The apex association of RWAs has even moved a division bench of the Delhi High Court seeking a court order for an outside audit.

The reason for this level of outrage and disbelief of claims by the government and the distribution companies are not far to seek.

Far from seeing a palpable improvement in service quality and delivery and a reduction in costs - the main promises made while justifying the power business - they have seen a sharp increase in power tariffs, falling service quality and growing outages and shortages. In other words, privatisation - as far as consumers are concerned - have made things worse, not better.

...In Mumbai, for instance, the stateowned - BEST is actually owned by the Brihan Mumbai Municipal Corporation - sells power at a lower cost to its consumers than its privately owned rival, has a comparable or better record across most service delivery parameters, and manages to meet the government's 'social obligation' of providing power to economically weaker sections of society

"In U-turn, RIL wants say in gas pricing"

In U-turn, RIL wants say in gas pricing

Less than three years after Reliance Industries Ltd. told the Supreme Court that the Krishna-Godavari basin gas is a “national resource” over which it had “no unfettered rights” in terms of price or quantity, and that it was “bound by the terms of the production sharing contract [PSC] and the policies and directions issued by the government from time to time,” the Mukesh Ambani-owned company has done a U-turn — serving a 90-day ultimatum on the Petroleum and Natural Gas Ministry to “amicably settle” a new gas price revising formula.

In 2009, when RIL did not want to supply gas at a previously agreed low price to NTPC and the Anil Ambani group, it took the plea that only the government had the right to decide at what price a “national resource” like natural gas could be sold. In the ‘Radia tapes' — recordings made by the IT Department of Niira Radia's conversations with journalists during that period — this is the line the former PR representative of RIL is heard pushing. But with that battle behind it and global gas prices spurting, the company now wants a say in the price-setting process.

Nice.  Also,

Interestingly, Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP Tapan Sen has charged RIL with deliberately scaling down production from the KG D6 gas blocks in order to force prices up. “It is expected of the contractor [RIL] handling the natural gas reserve to scale down the production of gas in KG D6 as pressure tactics for achieving premature price rise from the government,” he had written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh earlier this month.

That sudden mysterious drop in production is a bit less mysterious now.