Articles by Girish Sant

While solar energy has great potential as a renewable energy source for India, in terms of resource availability, flexibility in scale and applications, it is one of the most expensive of such options today. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, with an ambitious target of 22 GW of solar power capacity by 2022, is a departure from the past, as India has started to mainstream climate considerations in energy planning, and has allocated a large public subsidy for promotion of solar energy. But the mission objectives are unclear and actions are not aligned with India's development needs. Solar lanterns should be distributed using innovative mechanisms and a public process should be initiated to quickly develop a comprehensive plan for implementation of solar home lighting systems and off-grid solutions.

There has been a consistent lack of transparency and several governance lapses in the natural gas sector which have led to various kinds of concerns in important areas such as investment levels in blocks, availability of information regarding gas finds, content and process of arriving at pricing and utilisation policy, regulatory weaknesses and emerging market concentration. The objective of this article is to look behind the media glare and highlight the governance shortcomings that need urgent attention. Interestingly, a number of these issues were highlighted about two years ago on these very pages.

Is urban public transport subsidised more than its private counterpart? Through a case study of urban transport in Pune, this article demonstrates that car and two-wheeler users receive larger subsidies than bus users when all costs imposed by transport modes are considered.

Cricketer, electrochemist, energy analyst, rural energy practitioner, appropriate technology pioneer, spokesman for sustainable development, campaigner against nuclear energy and weapons, respected teacher and more than anything, a person who has tried to live up to Gandhiji's talisman. A homage to Amulya K N Reddy, who died on May 7.

SEB Privatisation: Transcending the Issue of Ownership Subodh Wagle Girish Sant Shantanu Dixit WE are glad that EPW is continuing the debate on the important issue of power sector privatisation. Arun Ghosh, in his article (EPW, July 19) argues that APSEB has been working most efficiently and, with limited tariff hike, not just APSEB but all SEBs can raise the required resources for expansion. Hence, for him, privatisation of SEBs and their unbundling are not needed and are unnecessarily promoted by the World Bank and other pro-privatisation lobbies. To support his arguments, he cites data regarding plant availability, auxiliary consumption and the tariff hike required to achieve 3 per cent ROR. His opposition to privatisation arises mainly from fears of rent seeking by politicians and officials, expropriation of assets and excessive profiteering by the private sector and failure to arrive at sector-level optimality due to the proposed unbundling. He predicts that the proposed privatisation of APSEB will lead to high cost of power resulting in loss of access for rural consumers (including farmers) with adverse impacts on food security and development of rural areas.