It would be a travesty to lay the blame for the 10-12 hour power cuts that Meghalaya is going through and which is disrupting lives and livelihoods only on the present government. But perhaps one reason why people voted for the NPP-led Government in 2018 was that it would bring a major overhaul in all sectors, especially one that was debilitated by gross mismanagement over many years. It is an open secret that the industrial sector in Meghalaya has been given too much indulgence and they have been drawing huge amounts of power but not paying their dues on time. The trouble is that neither governments past or present have ever been transparent. Each government has been trying to hide the cumulative losses of the MeECL and have tried and are still trying to bail it out with central funds and loans. There has been no trimming down of the loss- making verticals which is transmission and distribution.
All those companies that have bid for hydel power projects during the Congress-led MUA Government have come a cropper. Not one of them has even started their projects except for the Ganol Project which, although inaugurated, has not produced a single watt of power till date. The public needs to know the status of the Ganol project and even the existing hydel projects. How much is Meghalaya currently generating and what is the quantum of power that the state is buying from the national grid and at what cost? How much of Meghalaya’s own power generation capacity is being eroded due to depreciated machinery that can no longer be repaired? All these should be put up on the public domain since it is public money that is being consistently pumped into what is a losing concern. All other states of the North East have got out of the load shedding syndrome including Manipur which once was notorious for it. Meghalaya’s power sector which was run very ably in the 1990’s until the later period of that decade suddenly went downhill. The sheer scale of mismanagement is unprecedented and has brought the state to where it is today.
There have been suggestions from various quarters that Meghalaya should now think of investing in thermal power plants since it has captive coal mines which will last for several decades. When the whole world is thinking of going slow on the use of fossil fuels can Meghalaya do differently? What would be the investment for clean energy generation for thermal power? All these have to be kept in mind, apart from the environmental degradation that will follow the coal extraction and processing.
