What Powers Success on the Ground? The Gradual Reform of Electricity Distribution in Gujarat Working Paper Mapping Power Project Siddharth Sareen April 2017 Project Overview This working paper was written as part of a collaborative research project, Mapping Power, which aims to provide a state-level analysis of India’s electricity governance. The project is coordinated by Sunila S. Kale (University of Washington, Seattle), Navroz K. Dubash (Centre for Policy Research), and Ranjit Bharvirkar (Regulatory Assistance Project), and carried out by a team of 12 researchers. The research explores the views and perspectives of various stakeholders and organisations in each state and how they will be affected by new initiatives in India’s electricity sector, as well as the forces and constraints that shape decision-making in electricity governance. Using data from qualitative interviews with key informants buttressed by quantitative data, the research team covered 15 states as part of the analysis: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Punjab, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal. You can learn more about Mapping Power as well as access other working papers in the series here: http://www.cprindia.org/projects/mapping-power Acknowledgements Author: Siddharth Sareen,
[email protected] Preparation of this paper was supported by the Regulatory Assistance Project. This paper was informed, in part, by 26 interviews with a broad range of electricity sector stakeholders that were conducted on a not-for-attribution basis. The author wishes to thank the interviewees who generously took some of their valuable time to share their perspectives, as well as audiences at an Energy Transitions workshop (Berlin), an Ecological Challenges conference and a University of Oslo seminar (Oslo), a Max Weber Centre seminar (Erfurt), and an Energy Impacts workshop (Bergen) for helpful discussions in early 2017.