That’s quite the achievement. Though a side note of comparison I can’t believe France and Belgium suffer power losses in the 5 to 6% range. Unless I’m misunderstanding what that means, it seems excessive for a modern economy.
It's embarrassing that it took so long. India has been crippled by decades of socialist government overreach. Unfortunately, even the purportedly right wing BJP is unable to keep the government out of places where it doesn't belong.
Being to the right of the current INC is not an achievement. The only people not in that position are Maoists.
Anyway, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the wealthy and powerful. For instance, I personally quite dislike our new AI ruling class. But unfortunately, in India there was an attitude since independence that it is impossible to generate wealth in a legitimate manner. Which is going way too far! And has predictably bad outcomes for the country.
Definitely not nearly as vile. It certainly wasn't perfect, particularly things like the awful penal colonies, but jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either. India is experiencing a rise in nationalism, but would do well to imagine the counterfactual of what India would be like had Europe never visited.
It baffles me that country still has strong anti-capitalist views.
I wouldn't call the "license raj" of India as anti-capitalist.
India arguably has the strongest of institutions of all the countries in South Asia.
However, even its institutions and regulations are pathetically weak.
You probably also saw a previous post right here on this orange website
when someone tried to repatriate their business money outside of India.
It was painful just to read that they had to get approvals
from iirc sixteen different government agencies
to get their own money that they brought in from outside of India back.
Not profits, not proceeds, a fraction of what they put in.
Neither of these two cases is due to "anti-capitalist" views of India.
If you look at what was India before Moghul rule and British rule,
you could argue India has never been socialist before.
I think workers everywhere should have "strong anti-capitalist views",
because unrestrained capitalism is just anarchy.
I think that's a bad read of Indian institutions. They are incredibly powerful - in fact, they are far too powerful. That's the problem. The license raj is the epitome of authoritarian, centralized political and economic power. I suppose it was justified on socialist grounds, but it would be fair to say that saying so doesn't make it so! Before 91, nothing, and I mean nothing, could happen without government say-so.
The problem with Indian institutions is that they are far too powerful, centralized and bureaucratic. Just read the article - the problem was created by a lazy, corrupt, powerful and centralized bureaucratic system. The solution was to dismantle it and decentralize power.
True it should never have gotten so bad, but when there is no incentive to invest, this is the result you can expect. This happened in Venezuela and South Africa too - though SA also suffers from massive corruption (officials pocketing moneys and diverting from investment in infra).
I am aware. The initial privatization push was initiated by Congress in 1991! My lament is that privatization has remained anemic, even under the so-called right wing BJP.
But you should also acknowledge that national electrical reform was done by BJP. The real problem for Indian politics was the re-entry of the Gandhi nepo-baby dynasty. We would be a lot better off if they hadn't gotten their claws back into the INC.
It's not surprising. For one, stated vs actual goals always differ and someone needs pockets to reach into. For the other, plenty of countries that ended up listening to orgs like the World Bank saying "privatise everything immediately and reap the benefits!" just ended up handing the assets to cronies. Examples like Russia are of course well-known, but it's obviously happening under BJP in India as well.
30 years ago my local electric co-op was bragging they got transmission losses down to 4%, when the rest of US was 8% (I'm not sure if that is average or some other statistical term).
But yes, transmission losses exist and are surprisingly large
"The ones who pay will pay" is always true (from people using public transport without a ticket to "normal" tax payers having to shoulder the losses caused by loopholes and "incentives" for the upper 0.1%), but resigning to it so explicitly is rare.
I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago? Cutting electricity loss is one thing, but getting rid of "load shedding" (unplanned power cuts) is the really revolutionary part. It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge. My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).
Actually load shedding is planned power cuts. I have seen a schedule published in a newspaper with different regions of the city (not Delhi) and times when no electricity will be available. This is for ppl to plan their day
In areas where theft was particularly rampant and losses were as high as 83 percent, according to Tata, the companies took a different strategy. These pockets of Delhi were predominantly occupied by low-income families. Tata Power, and later BSES, worked to improve the water supply for these residents and provide educational opportunities, such as instruction in reading and writing in Hindi as well as financial literacy. These efforts focused on the women, who were at home more, and paid them to collect electricity payments from their neighbors. Bill payment rates from these areas are now on par with those of other parts of Delhi
That’s quite the achievement. Though a side note of comparison I can’t believe France and Belgium suffer power losses in the 5 to 6% range. Unless I’m misunderstanding what that means, it seems excessive for a modern economy.
It's embarrassing that it took so long. India has been crippled by decades of socialist government overreach. Unfortunately, even the purportedly right wing BJP is unable to keep the government out of places where it doesn't belong.
It baffles me that country still has strong anti-capitalist views. I guess lack of education does that to people.
Also, BJP is slightly right of Congress (post 1991) when it comes to economics.
Being to the right of the current INC is not an achievement. The only people not in that position are Maoists.
Anyway, I think it's reasonable to be suspicious of the wealthy and powerful. For instance, I personally quite dislike our new AI ruling class. But unfortunately, in India there was an attitude since independence that it is impossible to generate wealth in a legitimate manner. Which is going way too far! And has predictably bad outcomes for the country.
While the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company was, as a broad generality, not nearly so vile as (say) the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_colonization_of_the_Am..., it certainly didn't leave many Indians with a favorable impression of European-style capitalism.
Definitely not nearly as vile. It certainly wasn't perfect, particularly things like the awful penal colonies, but jump-starting a giant civilisation, say, 1000+ years into the future is not straightforward either. India is experiencing a rise in nationalism, but would do well to imagine the counterfactual of what India would be like had Europe never visited.
I wouldn't call the "license raj" of India as anti-capitalist. India arguably has the strongest of institutions of all the countries in South Asia. However, even its institutions and regulations are pathetically weak.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhopal_disaster
You probably also saw a previous post right here on this orange website when someone tried to repatriate their business money outside of India. It was painful just to read that they had to get approvals from iirc sixteen different government agencies to get their own money that they brought in from outside of India back. Not profits, not proceeds, a fraction of what they put in.
Neither of these two cases is due to "anti-capitalist" views of India. If you look at what was India before Moghul rule and British rule, you could argue India has never been socialist before.
I think workers everywhere should have "strong anti-capitalist views", because unrestrained capitalism is just anarchy.
I think that's a bad read of Indian institutions. They are incredibly powerful - in fact, they are far too powerful. That's the problem. The license raj is the epitome of authoritarian, centralized political and economic power. I suppose it was justified on socialist grounds, but it would be fair to say that saying so doesn't make it so! Before 91, nothing, and I mean nothing, could happen without government say-so.
The problem with Indian institutions is that they are far too powerful, centralized and bureaucratic. Just read the article - the problem was created by a lazy, corrupt, powerful and centralized bureaucratic system. The solution was to dismantle it and decentralize power.
True it should never have gotten so bad, but when there is no incentive to invest, this is the result you can expect. This happened in Venezuela and South Africa too - though SA also suffers from massive corruption (officials pocketing moneys and diverting from investment in infra).
The privatisation of Delhi power distribution was initiated by a Congress state government in 2000.
I am aware. The initial privatization push was initiated by Congress in 1991! My lament is that privatization has remained anemic, even under the so-called right wing BJP.
But you should also acknowledge that national electrical reform was done by BJP. The real problem for Indian politics was the re-entry of the Gandhi nepo-baby dynasty. We would be a lot better off if they hadn't gotten their claws back into the INC.
It's not surprising. For one, stated vs actual goals always differ and someone needs pockets to reach into. For the other, plenty of countries that ended up listening to orgs like the World Bank saying "privatise everything immediately and reap the benefits!" just ended up handing the assets to cronies. Examples like Russia are of course well-known, but it's obviously happening under BJP in India as well.
The BJP is marginally less socialist than the Congress. On the positive side, they are definitely less corrupt than the Congress.
To me transformation efficiency and distance losses actually seem to make 5-6% pretty impressive?
30 years ago my local electric co-op was bragging they got transmission losses down to 4%, when the rest of US was 8% (I'm not sure if that is average or some other statistical term).
But yes, transmission losses exist and are surprisingly large
I'm not sure what that percentage means, but power-cuts in Belgium are extremely rare.
You can't easily move energy from one place to another without losing some of it: https://www.ceer.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/3rd-CEER-Repo... That doesn't necessarily result in power outages, though.
Vajpayee FTW?
In Greece there is no incentive to fix power losses since the electric bill has a power losses line item.
You can steal as much as you want. The ones who pay will pay.
"The ones who pay will pay" is always true (from people using public transport without a ticket to "normal" tax payers having to shoulder the losses caused by loopholes and "incentives" for the upper 0.1%), but resigning to it so explicitly is rare.
I wonder how many HNers recall life in Delhi even 20 years ago? Cutting electricity loss is one thing, but getting rid of "load shedding" (unplanned power cuts) is the really revolutionary part. It was not uncommon for the power to go out several times a day and you had to rush to unplug expensive appliances (TV, laptop), because when the power came back it was often accompanied by a surge. My office was wired with two sets of electrical sockets, one connected to grid mains and the other connected to the UPS (for important equipment only).
Actually load shedding is planned power cuts. I have seen a schedule published in a newspaper with different regions of the city (not Delhi) and times when no electricity will be available. This is for ppl to plan their day
Do you remember the scheduled water cuts? We would stockpile water in buckets so we could flush the toilets. Good old days!
I still remember those summer midnights, without cooler
This is... interesting on multiple levels.