Primary Data Collection

Power distribution in Gujrat is handled by four DISCOMs:

 Dakshin Gujarat Vij Company Limited
 Madhya Gujarat Vij Company Limited
 Paschim Gujarat Vij Company Limited
 Uttar Gujarat Vij Company Limited

Ahmedabad falls under the jurisdiction of UGVCL. To understand the impact of UDAY, we headed to
their office in Chandkheda and spoke to Mr. Makwana, he technical head of the facility. He gave us a
rough idea of the working of the DISCOM, but said that UDAY scheme didn’t feature in his domain of
work. He directed us to Mrs. Alpa who heads the Sabarmati circle division of UGVCL. We took an
appointment to talk to Mrs Alpa who explained that UDAY scheme and its effect will be best explained
to us by the head office at Mehsana. We then spoke to Mr. BC Patel who told us that certain scheme
related data was confidential and had orders from the Chief Engineer to not disclose it to curious students,
analysts, journalists etc. However, he was helpful enough to redirect us to a junior engineer Mr. Patel who
explained in great detail the impact and working of the scheme.

Primary Data Analysis

Under the scheme, all the involved DISCOMs were given early targets with respect to certain parameters
like percentage of metered feeders – urban and rural, distribution of energy saving LED bulbs under the
Ujala scheme, electricity access to un-connected households, etc. The performance of each DISCOM was
measured in terms of their progress toward these targets.

Distribution of bulbs and pumps was part of DSM – demand side management. Mr Patel mentioned that
the sale of LED bulbs helped the people save a lot of money on electricity bills and help improve
their standard of living. According to the National Ujala Dashboard almost 39 million LED bulbs
were distributed as on 21st Feb 2018. About 5 million MWh of energy was saved per year
resulting in a cost saving of over Rs 20 billion.

Mr Patel then took us through the performance dashboard on the UDAY website. He explained the
meaning of the graphs and the significance of the numbers. He also mentioned about the state-wise
MOUs present on the website. He took great pride in explaining that given the standardized nature of
targets across states, most of targets were set at levels that had already been achieved by Gujarat. For
example, Gujarat was the first state to electrify all its villages under the Jyotigram Yojna in 2006. So, the
100% electricity access target under the UDAY scheme was already met before the scheme was
even implemented. Also, the percentage of metered feeder machines target of 100% was
something that could be easily maintained because all of their old feeder machines were already
metered and the new ones were being manufactured with a built-in meter.

Consumer Analysis
Although the scheme is aimed to ultimately benefit the end consumers by providing a reliable
power supply at a reasonable price, most individuals we interviewed were not aware about the
scheme and those who were aware were of the opinion that they could not see any direct benefits
of the scheme in the form of lower cost of power.
To make the benefits of the scheme more visible to the end consumers the following options can
be considered:
 One way is to ask the consumer to pay full price, as determined by state regulators and
later on the state governments can directly transfer subsidy payments to the consumer.
This way, discoms’ financial health is protected and the subsidy becomes an explicit
contract between the government and the beneficiary.
 Another way is to build the subsidy into the tariffs and have an annual budgetary
provision for subsidies, which is transferred to discoms at periodic intervals.