Imlisanen Jamir
At the launch of the Seva Setu Abhiyan in Chümoukedima on October 14, Executive Engineer Albert Ovung said that about 800 of the 10,000 households earmarked for rooftop solar under the PM Surya Ghar Muft Bijli Yojana have come forward. Assam is reported to have met its target of one lakh units. Nagaland’s demand of 200 MW is expected to reach 300 MW by 2030, and Ovung put the cost of buying the 100 MW gap from the market at about Rs 450 crore a year, with the tariff possibly reaching Rs 15 per unit within five years.
The terms on offer are generous by any standard. The Centre pays 60 percent of the benchmark cost for a system up to 2 kW, the state adds a subsidy of its own, and the combined figure announced is 96 percent up to 2 kW and 85 percent up to 3 kW. When the mission was launched, a 1 kW system was reported to leave the household with a net cost of about Rs 2,000. These figures have been in print for more than a year, which makes it hard to say that price explains the response, and harder still to accept the department’s statement that the reasons are unknown. An office that sets such terms and cannot say why most households stayed away has probably not asked them, and a few weeks of questions put to residents would tell it more than a second outreach camp.
Residents of the state are quick to complain about voltage that sags in the evening and outages that follow the first heavy rain, and most of the complaint is sent to the department. It is a fair complaint. Many of the same households spend each year on diesel, inverter batteries and appliances ruined by bad voltage, and have nothing on the roof to show for it afterwards. When the state offers to cover nearly the whole cost of a system that would supply part of a family’s own electricity, it is reasonable to ask what a household that wants better power is prepared to put in.
The name of the scheme invites a particular reading. Muft Bijli promises free electricity, and in a state where roads, water connections and ration supplies have long been treated as things the government delivers, a household may wait for officials to arrive, fit the panels and leave. With a subsidy of up to 96 percent that reading is easy to understand. The family is still expected to apply, to settle on a vendor and to have a roof it can build on, and since the subsidy is a share of the benchmark cost, a quotation above that figure falls to the household. A resident waiting for a call has taken a slogan for a contract, and every year the tariff climbs the mistake costs more.
Schemes in Nagaland tend to travel by acquaintance. A household decides about a new thing after seeing it on a neighbour’s roof, after hearing the village council or the church committee speak well of it, or after someone it trusts has used it for a season, and a notice in a newspaper has little weight beside any of these. A camp at the Deputy Commissioner’s office offers none of them, since it brings the scheme to people who already have reason to visit that office and leaves the rest with nobody they know to ask.
The officials who run the scheme, the legislators who announced it, and the pastors and village chairmen who are asked for advice all live under the eyes of their neighbours. A subsidy this generous is easier to believe in when the person recommending it has taken it up, and a scheme that has not reached the roofs of its own promoters will find it hard to explain why anyone else should go first.
The figure of 800 can be read as a failing of the public, and the department’s remark that the reasons are unknown suggests it has read it that way. It can equally be read as a message, sent by the households that stayed away in the only form open to them, which is silence. An office that sends a bill to every one of those households each month ought to be able to read it.
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