Freebies not the solution, say experts

 The long-term financial burden on the Delhi government’s power and water bonanza announced on Wednesday left a few experts wondering if freebies were the answer to the city’s problems.

The government has slashed power tariff by 50 per cent but at the cost of 10 per cent of its total annual budgetary allocation on development work of Rs 14,000 crore.

Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the annual outgo on offering subsidised power rates will be Rs 1,427 crore and on free water Rs 250 crore.

Former Delhi chief secretary Omesh Saigal said subsidy ultimately is taxpayers’ money. “It is the people themselves who are paying it,” he said.

Pramod Deo, former chairman of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC), also cautioned against wastage of resources if these come cheap for consumers.

“If tariff is low, people will consume more electricity, needing a larger subsidy spending from the government,” he said.

Sisodia, however, said that the attempt to keep 400 unit limit for enjoying the subsidy was to encourage energy saving in each household.

“Offering subsidies is bad economics. The principles of urban governance that talk about imposing user charges on consumers for financially strong local bodies are being ignored,” said an urban planner.

“The JNNURM mandates that the state government and urban local bodies collect user charges for better finances. What we are seeing in the city is its reverse,” he said.

Experts said that the solution to water woes lies in the revival of Yamuna and rainwater harvesting. “But it’s going to be a Herculean task,” said a government official.

Checking water wastage in the existing system should also be a priority along with offering subsidy, said Kapil Chawla, an activist.

The government’s water supplying agency Delhi Jal Board (DJB) supplies only 834 million gallons a day (MGD) to the capital, including 100 MGD of groundwater, where the demand is running past 1,000 MGD.

“Right now it’s hard to say how much water we lose due to leakage or theft. The district meter area (DMA) has been launched and it will update us with the situation very soon,” said a DJB official.

But by its own admission in 2013, the agency reported 40 per cent of water supplied as “non-revenue water”, meaning leaks in the distribution system coupled with challenges in meter reading and billing as well as theft from illegal connections.

For more than 50 lakh people living in unauthorised colonies and unplanned shanty towns, tankers and water ATMs can bring relief. “Illegal borewells in these colonies have already depleted groundwater table,” a DJB official said.

The city has started getting more Yamuna water from Haryana, and hopefully this additional water will be used judiciously to provide drinking water, he said.  
The fresh Yamuna water supply has brought to life water treatment plants in Bawana, Dwarka and Okhla.

Chawla suggested educating Delhiites not to use potable water for purposes other than drinking and cooking. “Inculcating a habit of using more and more treated sewage for non-drinking uses will help the city,” he said.