2.  ENERGY
2a) Electricity

    Nearly 50% of the households in Andhra Pradesh do not have electricity connections even in villages connected to the grid.  In 2004-05, we identified that the obstacle was not inability to pay the monthly electricity bills (which come to Rs. 40 / month, comparable to the cost of 3-4 litres kerosene that they use monthly for lighting), but a bribe of Rs. 1500 – 3000 that was being charged to get the initial meter and connection.  Since then, AID India has been helping families fight the corruption and obtain electricity connections without paying bribes.   

    Through our efforts over the past few years, several villages have come close to being 100% electrified in 2008.  For example, in Appalagraharam village, electricity came for the first time in 1975.  Till 2004, before our program started, out of about 200 households, only 68 had electricity connections.  Thus, the village was 34% electrified.  Between 2005 – 2007, AID facilitated 32 connections here.  In 2008, we further helped 100 households get connections in this village.  Now only  4-5 households remain in Appalagraharam without a connection (by their choice), and thus it is a village which is more than 97% electrified.  Likewise nearly 100% electrification has been achieved in Janakipuram, Seshadripeta and Balarampeta in addition to Appalagraharam.

    In 2006-07, we realized that another bottleneck was the absence of poles to take wires to some sections of the villages.  So even if families living in these sections wanted connections, they could not get them.  In 2008, we mobilized people to demand poles to be installed in their sections.  Our efforts led to 213 poles being installed in 2008.  

    After the initial phase in 2004-05, where it took some effort to clear each set of applications without bribes, the engineers at the electricity department in Pondur and Santakavita mandals have been cooperative and there is a healthy can-do spirit.  We also help people get fans at a lower cost by making a group order and bringing them to the villages where it is easy for people to purchase.  

    Governance Matters:  This year, the Andhra government lowered the connection fee to Rs. 150  for all families (earlier it was Rs. 550 for general and  350 for SC/ST).   This has given a boost to securing electricity connections for all.  Since we have been on the scene, we have been able to motivate families to take advantage of this government discount.  Access to electricity was a campaign issue in Andhra Pradesh in the past election.  Lowering the connection fee is part of keeping the election promise, so we see democracy at work.

    Questioning billing errors:  Sometimes due to faulty meters, or due to errors in reading  or recording, a villager may get an exorbitantly high bill in a given month.  This lowers confidence of everyone in having electricity connections because people worry that this can happen to them as well.  Under the guidance of Simhadri Naidu, who coordinates the electricity program for AID India Srikakulam, people with errors in billing go to the weekly lok adalat (people's court) in the mandal office and get their bill rectified.  For example recently there was a case where Rs. 800 was demanded to replace a meter that was burnt.  By petitioning the lok adalat, this amount was waived.  Similarly there were cases where a family whose bill normally came to Rs. 100, was billed for Rs. 650 for the 2-month billing period.  For poor families these differences are significant.  The lok adalat ordered these bills to be corrected.  

    Rights-Based Approach:  Note that instead of providing technical solutions such as alternate energy, we followed a rights-based approach to getting electricity connections.  This is because the villages here are on the grid and get 12-15 hours of electricity every day.  It is access to this electricity that the government was denying to the poor by imposing bribes.  In villages like Appalagraharam, this effectively cut off 66% of the families from the grid.  An alternate energy solution using solar, wind, etc would have been more expensive (Rs. 1 crore or $200,000 for generation and distribution to 1000 households for comparable lighting) and not scalable to so many families.  Moreover, it would not address the cause of the darkness in these villages.