Meghalaya is stepping into its 40th year. In 40 years only the Leshka power project has been commissioned, much after its timeline. The project has been bogged down by several handicaps. But at the root of the problem is a serious lack of accountability which has bred corruption. Meghalaya’s bane is its incomplete and delayed projects. The Leshka project has turned out to be a money guzzler – Rs 1100 crores for generating only 10 MW of power. This has got to be the most expensive power project in the world! Considering that Meghalaya produces coal by the thousands of tonnes per day and has been doing it for decades you wonder why thermal power projects have not come up. The one that did come up at Nangalbibra in the eighties was a still born child. The machinery meant to power up the thermal project was later shamelessly sold as scrap. The reason was clear. At the time when the project was conceived Nangalbibra was in the back of beyond. Carting equipment and machinery to the place was a gigantic task. And if something was to go wrong it would have taken days to bring spare parts to Nangalbibra then. But it was the way projects were designed and the decision about where to locate them that is all so wrong. It was all based on the worn out ratio of Khasi:Jaintia: Garo. If some major project is initiated in Khasi Hills a similar one had to be put up in Jaintia Hills and a third in Garo Hills. Technical feasibility and financial viability were terms that were never important in the history of Meghalaya’s rough and tumbling politics. Every project is measured by how much employment it would bring rather than on the basis of it being a public good and benefitting people.
The basis for starting a power project is to generate electricity. That objective cannot be lost. Employment of locals which always seems to weigh heavily on the government of the day, has however taken priority. No wonder the MeSEB became an overloaded house whose inmates far exceeded what it could offer. In the early nineties it had to be trimmed down. Three years ago it was corporatized but it continues to perform like a government run agency. Accountability, performance and profit-making are nowhere in the agenda. These benchmarks are not even something to be considered. All decisions have been political; every decision was. The result is that we have a power deficient state and the power we buy from the national grid is being paid for from the state coffers. But what is probably the last straw is that the industries in Meghalaya get subsidised power even though they are profit making, private enterprises! This has got to end. Meghalaya must develop a more robust power policy or sink into further debt and powerlessness.
