As we all know that India is a most densely populated country in the world next to China. Our infrastructure development has not been at par with China. We are lagging much behind and because of this we face lot of problems right from availing basic services by citizens to increasing investment (mainly FDI etc) in our economy. Apart from that energy security is also one of the major problem that India is facing these days. Most of the rural areas do not get electricity for more than 15 hours a day! The shortage of electricity is seen in cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru as well as the national capital Delhi. The electricity tariffs are sky rocketing and people are often made to pay very heavy amount of electricity bills. Rich people do use air conditioners, fans, fridges and many other electronic appliances which consume huge amount of electricity. They may say that they are ready to pay the electricity bills whatever may be the amount. But the issue is not that. I am not against using n number of electronic and electric appliances. But the fact of the matter is along with the proper utilization there is lot of wastage of electricity. For example, many a times, fans will be running even though no one is sitting in the room, TVs will be on even though no one is there to watch it! Lights are not switched off! Still large number of people are not aware about the critical situation of India with regard to energy scarcity (of course, there are lot of things that people are not aware about the basic things of India which I will discuss in some other post). At this juncture, this is my plan to save electricity!
Government of India has come up with lot of measures to save energy. For ex - Green buildings, Bureau of Energy Efficiency and so on. But they are facing the problem in implementation and most importantly the common man of our society is not aware of these things! Neither s/he is informed about these things by anybody, nor he cares to understand these things by herself/himself. Therefore, government has to take up new initiative at household level! There are two options with me! Generally what happens is, people come to know about their electricity bill after consumption! Sometimes, they get shocked to see the very high amount of the bill also! But then they will grumble the State Electricity Board for hiking the tariffs and pay the bill. For one or two days after paying the bill, they will be careful. But later again the same thing goes on! Therefore Government has to make the provision of showing the electricity charges on a real time basis.There should be a display installed in every houses' so that people will come to know that their electricity bill is going up and they will reduce their consumption. Automatically the unnecessary electricity wastage will get reduced.
The second idea is bit autocratic but may work in some places and there is nothing wrong in trying this method too! The government should calculate per capita consumption in urban India as well as rural India (At a later stage this can be city specific also). Each house should register the number of family members in a house with the Electricity board! accordingly a machine should be fixed in each house with the data saved in it about the number of members in the family. The machine should be capable of cutting the electricity supply once the total electricity allotted to that house for a day based on the per capita consumption calculation. May be the allotment may be fixed for 1 or 2 members extra upon the actual number of members of a family so that in case if some guests are there, then also it would be manageable! The machine should also have the facility like, if a family consumes less electricity than the allotted amount, then it should be added for the next day! Within that limit people are free to use any number of electrical appliances! This average per capita consumption may also be varied according to the season. Because in North India, both winter and summer are extreme and there may be variability in the per capita consumption of electricity! Initially this method may be extremely criticized by people! But no issues. As the awareness increases, they get used to consume less electricity. Ultimately, their expenditure on electricity bills will be reduced as well as the country's burden as a whole! Similar machine might be modified to fix the electricity consumption for commercial purposes like in shops, educational institutions etc. India has got n number of engineering colleges as well as bright engineering students! So doing these things is not a difficult thing! We just need to have willingness to implement!
© Akshara Damle
