What India achieved in energy access is a global case study.
I worked with solar Micro grids with a US solar firm SunEdison ( the first solar company to take rural electrification seriously ) and then World Bank in the rural electrification domain in India, Nepal and SE Asia, after my military career. Getting electricity to rural areas was considered a near impossible challenge. India had nearly 450 million people without energy access in 2014. Conferences, panels, debates across the world - this number used to haunt as an Indian. So many reasons, excuses, policies just to justify why there’s no connectivity. Numerous policies and regulations, schemes, but still, 450 million ! And regulations and cost were truly detrimental in Solar access to these remote areas. Basically nothing much was happening.
I was doing research project on same in Nanyang University in Singapore when Modi gov took over. So I thought finally there might be some work in this domain now since they’ve promised it. So I came back and started my startup, and did a few pilots in remote villages in couple of states. The popular solution that time was Solar micro grids, optimised with power back up and minimal transmission expense and infra. Extending grid lines to remote villages wasn’t even being discussed before 2014.
But what Modi government did was single minded brute forced focus, and took electricity to almost every corner of the country in few years. Today more than 98% of nation is connected via electricity lines. Villages finally received electricity after 70 years of independence.
This obviously threw me out of work and bankrupted my initiative 😃But the nation was in much better state than it earlier was. So no qualms there !
This achievement was nothing short of a miracle.
That brightening of the UP-Bihar belt is the most astounding thing India has achieved in the last 10-15 years. Getting electricity to every nook & cranny, increasing the industry, fastest rising per capita in India, and the population density that's benefiting all, shine through directly into space.
A sharp contrast from Bengal where the lights seem to have dimmed while the population increased, sadly. An alien looking for a place to land in the world may very well land in India's Bihar, seeing the brightness, and discover layers upon layers of India's civilization and culture buried underneath.