India has seen superlative progress in electrical connectivity, achieving 96.7 percent connectivity to the grid as of 2020 from around 67 percent over a decade ago. For context, the electricity sector can be broadly split between generation, transmission, and distribution. Despite recent progress, electrical connectivity is still racked by problems such as irregular supply and voltage fluctuations, and distribution companies face losses. Much of the electricity generated is derived from coal, which serves to impede our climate goals, and renewable alternatives require energy storage mechanisms that are technologically complex and depend on locally unavailable raw materials.

In this episode of Interpreting India, Karthik Ganesan joins Sayoudh Roy to delve further into the issues ailing electrical connectivity in India.

Episode Contributors

Karthik Ganesan is a fellow and director for research coordination at the Council on Energy, Environment and Water, where he ensures cross-team coherence for CEEW's research direction and imperatives. He also acts as an internal adviser across research teams and creates institutional platforms that spur innovation. In addition, he holds a master's degree in public policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, an undergraduate degree in civil engineering, and an MTech in infrastructure engineering from IIT Madras.

Sayoudh Roy was a senior research analyst with the Political Economy Program at Carnegie India. His work focuses on the macroeconomic implications of frictions in labor and financial markets and how interactions between them can affect macroeconomic aggregates.

Additional Readings

State of Electricity Access in India, by Shalu Agarwal et al.

What Smart Meters Can Tell Us, by Shalu Agarwal et al. 

Mapping India’s Energy Subsidies 2021, by Balasubramanian Viswanathan et al.

Developing Resilient Renewable Energy Supply Chains for Global Clean Energy Transition, by Akanksha Tyagi et al.

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