Is electrification in India fiscally sustainable?
Electrification has been a landmark of economic development for more than a century and electricity continues to find new uses today. The Government of India, after decades of effort and investment, in 2019 declared household electrification to be complete. While no census has been run as confirmation, multiple sources of data show that grid electrification has indeed reached near-universal levels (the electrification rate in the nationally representative National Family Health Survey V, 2019-21 was reported at 96.8%. The pace of electrification has been rapid. In lagging states of Northern and Eastern India, the household electrification rate, from the time of the 2011 Census, has leapt up by 43 percentage points in West Bengal, 48 pp in Jharkhand, 53 pp in Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, and a staggering 79 pp in Bihar. This paper attempts to draw out a path through which electrification can be fiscally sustained while providing reliable electricity supply.
