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NEWS TV APP MAGAZINE HOME INDIA MOVIES TECHNOLOGY MAIL TODAY FYI SPORTS EDUCATION TELEVISION News / Magazine / States / Punjab: Free with strings attached Punjab: Free with strings attached February 10, 2018 UPDATED 11:00 IST EMAIL AUTHOR Asit Jolly FOLLOW READ LATER A NEW SWITCH: CM Amarinder Singh (seated) at a farmers' union meeting. Photo: Prabhjot Gill hief Minister Amarinder Singh has embarked on a politically precarious venture by taking on an issue C that has vexed the state's economists and industrialists for over two decades-rejigging the free power subsidy that has been bleeding Punjab's finances. It's a path few governments, including Singh's earlier one (2002-2007), have dared to tread. Consider this: starting at just under Rs 4,000 crore a year in 1997 when the then SAD-BJP government first introduced free electricity for the farm sector, the power subsidy bill last year (2017-2018) soared to a staggering Rs 6,000 crore. So last December, the state government signed an agreement with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)-based Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Plan (J-PAL) South Asia. MIT economists, in collaboration with Punjab's power and irrigation department, will steer a pilot project under which farmer-owners of some 990 electric-powered tube wells in Fatehgarh Sahib district (outside Chandigarh) will receive direct cash transfer to their bank accounts to pay power bills. Newly installed meters will clock their usage. If it's rolled out across the state, the initiative could rescue both the cash-strapped government as well as deliver a much-needed boost to the farm sector. Chandigarh's Institute for Development & Communication (IDC), which had first proposed the direct transfer of power subsidy, broadly estimates that the state could save close to Rs 3,000 crore, currently lost to pilferage and misuse of power. "We had told the state government (the SAD-BJP were in power then) that the savings (Rs 3,000 crore) could be utilised to boost the rural economy in a variety of ways, including pensions for old and infirm farmers," says IDC director Pramod Kumar. Although J-PAL South Asia's pilot project in Fatehgarh isn't exactly what the IDC had mooted, it's a workable clone. Chief Minister Singh believes it is the answer to the problem of depleting groundwater across large tracts of Punjab. "DBTE (Direct Benefit Transfer for Electricity)," Singh says, "is to encourage farmers to use canal water and extract less from the depleting water table." There's an obvious incentive here too. "Farmers will get to keep (from the DBTE) whatever they save by reducing the use of electricity-driven pumps," he says. There are at present close to 1.4 million tube wells in Punjab, and with free power to operate pumpsets for 10 to 12 hours through the twin-wheat and paddy-cropping cycles, the water table is today dangerously low. Large tracts of land in the state are already in the 'grey' or 'no extraction' zone. But even as the state government is avidly pushing DBTE, the original authors of 'free power for farmers' have vehemently opposed the move. Former deputy CM and SAD president Sukhbir Badal says DBTE is a hoax, an "anti-farmer" move. Do You Like This Story? 2 0 Posted by Vivek Surendran.

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