As the GoI has achieved their target of electrifying all villages (18,374 un-electrified villages as of April’15) in India, 12 days before schedule, the Modi-hating brigade in the media and in our civil society have started undermining this humongous achievement. Quite naturally.
The question: If all villages have been electrified, why thousands of households in India still don’t have electricity?
Answer: This question comes from the ignorance of not knowing the difference between village electrification & household electrification. On August 15th, 2015, Narendra Modi promised to electrify all the 18,374 un-electrified villages within 1000 days. He clearly promises in his speech that within 1000 days, all villages will receive the basic infrastructure for transmission of electricity. He promised village electrification and not household electrification.
Sharing a powerful speech of our Hon’ble PM on electrifying 18,500 villages of India in only 1000 days. @PMOIndia @AmitShah @rammadhavbjp @RajatSethi86 pic.twitter.com/aNxe9SNDlh
— Nongthombam Biren (@NBirenSingh) April 29, 2018
According to the definition set by previous Governments, a village is considered electrified if 10% of the households in a village have electricity connection. And by that definition, Modi delivered what he promised, and in time.
However, the concern that this question raises is very valid, although their intention may be different. What is the use of village electrification if households don’t have electricity! They fail to understand that village electrification, i.e, setting up of the basic infrastructure, is the first step. The government too realises that household electrification is more important and in rural villages, not all houses would be ready to afford a new connection. Hence, they slowly shifted their focus from village electrification to household electrification and launched Saubhagya Scheme, under which GoI, in partnership with State Governments, is providing free electricity connection to rural households.
Since the scheme was launched in Oct’17, within just a little over 6 months, 5 million+ households have received electricity connection for free.
Source: http://saubhagya.gov.in/
The Government has an ambitious target of connecting the remaining 31 million+ households by March 2019. If 5 million households could be connected within 6 months, 31 million is not a dream very far away.
But, but, do you think the Modi-hating brigade would stop cribbing if all the households are connected within the scheduled time? Obviously not.
They will question: if all the households in India have received an electricity connection, why don’t they have power at home?
Answer: Well, that’s the last step and the GoI has it covered too. They have promised that by 2022 all households in India will have 24 hours power supply.
