With Lanco Infratech’s plant (1200 MW) acquisition, and hoping everything to go as planned, Adanis who have given the nation a 4,800 MW Mundra project, would be the topmost capacity generator among the private players after this and completion of all its plants. Tatas would become the next, followed by Reliance group. Thus capacity of about 20,000 MW plants are under construction. So these capacities cannot be counted as accomplished as yet.

All this sounds good. What does not is the current irreversible fact that there is not enough coal and gas available in the country to feed the plants consistently, unless the power generators strive to import coal by paying through nose.

The KG D6 basin of Reliance Industries is under perpetual quagmire of controversies about exploring and then feeding gas to the state-of-the-art plants of NTPC and private sector generators. Non-stop supply of gas to gas-based plants is another challenge. The GAIL does not find any other option than importing to meet emergency situations.

All these lead the power ministers and secretaries onto one track to tread, talking loud about capacity generation albeit low and inconsistent electricity generation. We are witnessing this for over last six decades.

Sycophancy and pampering are one thing, producing results is another. The twins do not gel well unless steps are taken to identify hard solutions for which we need to call the spade a spade; that is, how much electricity is actually generated for both manufacturing and domestic consumption, and why not it is adequate?

The truth most people do not want to understand is that there is indeed huge difference between capacity generation and actual generation of electricity. Besides, there are always the dogging issues of variant load factors (PLF) in old and new plants. Plants’ capacities would go defunct if these cannot actually work for generation, and the generation is possible only, and only, if there is sustained feeds of fuels to the plants.

NTPC chief Arup Roy Choudhury has recently said that the company has no option other than shutting down 7 to 8 plants. Private sector captains in the power generation have been crying all through 2011 to 2014 citing CIL’s discriminatory distribution of quality coal for their plants. We have been already in the middle of noisy mess about fuels for plants all these years. Alike NTPC chief, the power-sector captains were also citing new tariff norms and the restructuring of taxation and incentives, which are vital for making corporates financially viable.

Without manufacturing getting to work to its full capacity, GDP growth and job creation are not possible. And without ensuring adequate domestic supplies of power the government of the day will not be stable, howsoever dearly it is necessary for a democratic country.

In the present circumstances, what the Indian power managers are required to do is better resource planning and management by adopting international quality standards such as formulated by international bodies from Europe, Japan and USA such as EFQM, JUSE and ASQ.

The EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) is an excellence model that provides a holistic view of the organization and it can be used to determine how different methods fit together and complement each other.

JUSE (Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers) model of excellence aims to promote systematic studies needed for the advancement of a scientific or technological input which aims to contribute to development of avowed industrial or technical standard.

ASQ (American Society for Quality) is an American excellence group passionate about quality and excellence. ASQ imparts quality training and teaching onto corporate recruits world over and has presence in 150 countries including China and India. In fact ASQ has contributed much behind today’s China’s upward mobility in world economy and manufacturing. In India ASQ has already contributed to the excellence of over 1200 large companies including the Tatas, Infosys, Reliance, Max Healthcare, NTPC, BHEL.

These international quality institutes incorporate mechanisms for structured and proactive planning through Failure Mode Effects and Analysis (FMEA) and other advanced scientific management methods used by developed countries. At the same time they implement concepts for infrastructure development which currently are absent in practices of power sector managers in India. It is a six-sigma task that instills skilful handling of actions taken in the power sector functioning. As of now, apparently India is in the prisoner’s dilemma in so far as power sector is concerned.

There are systematic bottlenecks in the system and these have arisen due to persistent problems allowed to continue in the country for last four decades. .The government organizations as also the private players have not been able to unearth underground coal in the forest areas spreading over Jharkhand, Odisha and Chhattisgarh.

There is failure to put the captive coal blocks under production schedules for full capacity mining, as the locale-specific mafia-hold would not yield. The mafia has made deep inroads into the country’s political system through entrenched oligarchs of various political parties. Further, there is absence of proper rules for land acquisitions and alternative arrangements to assuage the fears of the locals and replacement of the losses of flora and fauna.

It is interesting that for over four decades, the governments in the centre failed to handle these fundamental issues which could have been accomplished by logical and gainful rehabilitation, corruption-free dragnet to ensure law and order in the mafia-held regions, and all-party consensus on land acquisition. The nation has resources to have accomplished all this.

One area of concern is mining. What happens to the best examples in the world scenes in such imbroglios? Why can’t we emulate the best examples of governance such as scientific afforestation of the cut flora, steady reintroduction of the fauna in the afforested regions as the forests grow, take development as the motto in gainful rehabilitation of the displaced people from the forest regions selected for mining and chopping off the forests there? The country boasts of a huge databank in its universities of eminent scientists in agriculture, botany, ecology, hydrology, geologists and environment. Building up flourishing afforested corridors is possible. It is high time the universities are given the tasks to carry out such long-term missions. (IPA Service)