A REGIONAL DECOMPOSITION OF DOMESTIC ELECTRICITY CONSUMPTION IN INDIA: 1980-2005

摘要

Access to electricity services is fundamental to development and has been shown to be important for improving the quality of life and level of human well being. Yet, despite this general recognition of the importance of electricity for development, in India, close to 40 percent of households still lack access to this basic service. Recognizing this as a fundamental drawback, the government has made several policy reforms and initiated several programs to achieve the target of improving access. The National Electrification Policy 2005 aims at total village electrification by 2010 and total household electrification by 2012. While significant progress in electrification has been achieved in certain regions and states of the country, in others, particularly in rural areas, large fractions of the population still lack access. In fact, due to the increasingly poor financial situation of state utilities, the rate of village electrification dropped during the latter half of the nineties compared to the decade before. Besides the still unsatisfying situation regarding access, the electricity supply situation in India is also quite alarming in many respects. Shortfalls in supply seriously affect the quality of life of the population and their economic growth potential. While access has improved over the last few decades, there has been an increasing gap between demand and supply and deteriorating quality of supply. In India, per capita consumption of electricity is very low - between 100 and 450 kilowatt (kW) per annum, with an average of about 300 kW (corresponding figures for Canada and the United States are 17,300 and 12,500 kW, respectively). This reflects a poor standard of living, particularly in hamlets and villages where electricity consumption is particularly low. This paper aims to assess the recent growth in electricity consumption within the domestic or household sector in India at a regional level, looking at data spanning the period of the last two and a half decades. Our objective in doing so is to understand the relative importance of some of the important drivers of change and the differences in the relative importance of these drivers across different regions of the country, between rural and urban populations and across different periods of time.