The government bailed out power distribution companies after the cabinet approved a plan that would restructure their debt and implement new reforms that are intended to make the discoms more accountable and efficient. India's power distribution companies are hosts to an extensive list of debilitating problems ranging from crumbling and highly outdated infrastructure to corruption, gross mismanagement, and losses from inefficient transmission and theft, among others. Years of these issues, compounded and multiplied on each other led to unmitigated losses, leading to discoms being INR 1.9 lakh-crore (US$35.5 billion) in debt by the end of FY 2010-2011. India's state-owned distribution companies were already baited out once in the last decade, back in 2002 when power sector reforms introduced the notion of privatization into the field. Clearly, the intended benefits of the move never materialized.
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