In 2014, a documentary titled "The City of Blackouts" was broadcast worldwide, revealing the strange phenomenon of electricity theft in India.
Northern IndiaKanpurThere has been a very serious power failure in human history, 600 million people were without power for two days, and this matter has also become a hot search.
But for those living in Kanpur, India, power outages have long been commonplace.
Kanpur has a population of 3 million, but there is a severe shortage of electricity, and the theft of electricity has been banned repeatedly.
The power company that supplies the electricity and the citizens who use it disagree on the cause of the power shortage.
The electric power company accuses the citizens of arrears in electricity bills and rampant theft of electricity; the citizens accuse the electric power company of inadequate service, untimely equipment maintenance, and indiscriminate collection of electricity bills.
In this case, both parties find their own solutions.
As a result, Roha, who is highly skilled in stealing electricity, was well received by the public and became a "hero of electricity stealing".
The shocking phenomenon of electricity theft
New Delhi TV station conducted a survey and showed that up to 28% of electricity users in India do not pay electricity bills, and there is electricity theft. When
reaches the peak of electricity consumption, frightening electric sparks will burst out from those exposed interfaces.
Pedestrians are walking on the road, and the wires above their heads are constantly sparking, which has become a street scene in urban and rural India. The majority of Indians have become accustomed to this, and is not surprised by .
Because they may be the creators of this spectacle, the participants in stealing electricity.
The spread of electricity theft has given birth to a profession-stealing electrician.
India's infrastructure is backward, and the electrical lines are disorganized. They are crisscrossed and intertwined with each other. They are not professional electricians, and there is no place to start.
Ordinary Indians don't know how to use electricity, so they feel disgusted with electric tiger . They are too afraid to avoid a mess of wires, and they will not risk their own lives to save money.
Therefore, stealing electricity is a highly specialized job.
Therefore, those who have a little professional knowledge are very favored.
They have professional tools for stealing electricity such as seat belts, electric pens, insulating pliers, etc. They can distinguish what is an optical cable, what is a cable, and what is a high-voltage and low-voltage wire among the chaotic wires, and then steal electricity calmly, bringing benefits to the public. Bright, feel the thrill of stealing electricity.
It is shameful to steal electricity, but in India, not only ordinary people do this, but people with a bit of status and status are also scrambling for it. Everyone is not ashamed, but proud.
According to statistics from the Central Electricity Authority of India in 2018, about 25.6% of all electricity produced in India that year was stolen, which is an incredible figure .
For example, 261,130 gigawatts of electricity was stolen in India last year, enough electricity to light the entire Washington for two years.
Why do Indians steal electricity?
India's electricity price is very cheap. In the Rajasthan 1070MW new solar project (Tranche-III) auction held by the Indian solar company SECI, the photovoltaic electricity price reached 2 rupees/kWh (about 2.7 cents / /kWh), which is only one-fortieth of the electricity price of developed countries in South Korea, and one-third lower than that of developed countries in China.
Calculated in this way, the average Indian household only needs to spend more than 40 yuan a month on electricity bills, which is just the amount that ordinary Chinese people pay for a fast food outside.
If this is the case, why does electricity theft occur in India?
Low power supply efficiency
India's power transmission and distribution grid is weak, equipment is highly aged, low power supply efficiency, frequent power outages, and residents are dissatisfied.
The management is backward and full of loopholes.
The business ability of the staff is poor, and there are serious management defects and service deficiencies on the power distribution side. The erection of distribution lines is not standardized, which objectively creates conditions for users to steal electricity such as laps and jumpers.
Corruption makes Indians mentally unbalanced
Due to outdated equipment and backward management methods, advanced technologies such as automation and intelligence of modern power systems cannot be applied, and personnel such as meter reading, billing, and supervision have falsified in the charging process. Space.
Many officials and staff members of the power system have been wooed and corroded by enterprises, and they are rent-seeking for power, making illegal profits for those enterprises and saving them a lot of electricity bills. A survey by an international agency
shows that electricity theft in India is not limited to low-income groups, and factories and mines are the leaders of electricity theft.
In order to reduce costs, some large industrial and commercial users first resorted to bribing meter readers, incumbents or third-party agencies to avoid electricity bills.
As a result, ordinary Indians have become victims. They cannot use electricity during peak electricity consumption periods, and their psychological balance is seriously unbalanced.
The phenomenon of corruption has exacerbated the distrust of some people in the public sector, and even many Indians believe that they have been trapped by the collusion between government departments and enterprises.
Indians feel that electricity belongs to the state and the whole country of India is controlled by the bourgeoisie. These monopoly sectors of the power sector have squeezed everyone's blood and sweat, and their managers and employees receive high salaries dozens of times higher than ordinary Indians.
If everyone honestly pays electricity bills, wouldn't it be unfair for corrupt bureaucrats and capitalists to take advantage of us.
We are originally a low caste, a pariah at the bottom of society, a group that is ignored and exploited.
Since and the government do not take us seriously, there is no need for us to abide by the rules at all.
Poverty makes everyone immoral
In the past ten years, India's economy has grown by an average of 7%, ranking among the best in the world.
But the income of ordinary people in India has not increased, and many people live in poverty.
A report published by the World Bank shows that one-third of the world's poor now live in India, and these people live on less than $1.25 (about 65 rupees) a day.
In 2018, India's extremely poor population accounted for 33% of the world's extremely poor population, higher than 22% 30 years ago.
In India, although the caste system has been abolished for more than 70 years, the invisible hierarchy still exists, and people of lower castes can only Take a low-paying job.
If you can't keep your food and clothing and live a decent life, people will not speak morality.
In this case, stealing electricity is not surprising.
So, what are the consequences of stealing electricity?
According to Indian officials, India loses 100,000 crore rupees every year due to theft of electricity, which is equivalent to 88.7 billion yuan, which is an astonishing figure.
According to the data released by the Indian Power Grid Corporation, their liabilities have reached as high as 2.46 trillion rupees. The long-term losses have made it difficult for the company to maintain and overwhelmed, and it will only go bankrupt if it continues.
Because of electricity theft, there is still a hole in the power grid company's annual loss of 64 billion US dollars.
The World Bank said in a report that in 2013 India's power sector had a debt of 2.5 trillion rupees, or 2.5 percent of India's GDP.
In 2018, this number has grown to 3.1%.
These bad debts pose a potential threat to India's financial system as these funds come from public banks.
In the long run, it will bring disaster to India's financial system.
But the above-mentioned consequences are in the future and cannot be seen now. The imminent danger of
is that the normal life of Indians is affected.
The phenomenon of electricity theft is spreading, and people can use electricity for free, and they will not feel distressed when they use it.
They will use high-probability electrical appliances recklessly, overwhelm the power supply lines, negatively affect the power supply system, and affect the safety of power supply.
The most ironic thing is that in August 2019, the energy officials of Madhya Pradesh, India were speaking at a press conference about the great achievements of the Congress Party in power generation.
The site was suddenly cut off and plunged into darkness, embarrassing the officials who spoke.
On July 30, 2012, a severe power outage broke out in India, involving 19 of India's 28 states and directly affecting the lives of nearly 700 million people.
The damage caused by electricity theft to power companies is also huge. The large-scale electricity theft directly led to the poor operation of the Indian power company and brought many crises.
The loss of tens of billions of rupees caused by electricity theft has burdened power companies with non-performing loans of trillions of rupees. The survival of these companies has become a problem, and sustainable development has become a distant dream.
Many private power companies have little to no money to invest in new equipment or pay their employees, and even transmitting electricity to local power plants is a problem.
The transmission director of Uttar Pradesh Power Company in India said that the company had not recruited any new staff in the past 30 years, employing about 100,000 people here, but now there are fewer than 40,000 employees.
What people don't understand is why the government is indifferent in the face of the intensifying phenomenon of electricity theft?
In the face of such serious electricity theft, why does the Indian government not crack down on ?
First of all, India is governed by multiple parties, and votes decide everything. Whether or not a political party can take to power and depends entirely on public support.
So every ruling party has to do everything possible to please ordinary people in India, because they account for 80% of the population of India.
In order to gain their support, they have to make various promises during the election, such as lowering electricity prices, improving people's living standards and so on.
But many of these promises are empty promises that are difficult to deliver. After
came to power, if they did not fulfill their promises, the common people would be very dissatisfied.
As the ruling party, they have a guilty conscience and lack confidence in their words and actions. If
cracks down on theft of electricity, it will arouse widespread dissatisfaction among the people, ignite their anger, and trigger large-scale protests and riots. Since
is an multi-party system , if something goes wrong with the ruling party, the opposition party will not help it.
Therefore, the government does not dare to let go of the crackdown on electricity theft.
When cracking down on electricity theft, professionals and law enforcement officers can only enter sparsely populated villages to work in order to avoid violent conflicts, and the remediation work in densely populated areas can only be done in a mere formality.
The phenomenon of electricity theft in India is not unrelated to its political system .
From the phenomenon of electricity theft in India, it is not difficult for us to draw a conclusion that the political system must conform to the national conditions.
