The state electricity boards: Private vs. public `entreprisation'
- 2002
- p.29-49.
- Jan-Mar
The poor financial and technical condition of the Indian power sector - especially State Electricity Boards (SEBs) - is widely acknowledged. There is less consensus on its roots, and solutions are long to emerge. This article insists on the systemic and structural roots of inefficiency, and focuses pointedly on the administration - like decision-making process in SEBs and on its impact on efficiency. it is shown that SEBs have neither been asked to look for cost efficiency, nor given the means to do it. Actually, there is a need for `entreprisation' of SEBs (turning them into firms, after a concept coined from the study of post-socialist countries), which is merely different from the so-called corporatisatiion presently promoted. The article draws the limits and bottlenecks of both public and private frameworks for this exercise, especially in terms of redistributive effects. - Reproduced.