WE HAVE got to face up to the fact that India as a whole is in the midst of a serious energy deficit. Insufficient power could well turn out to be the Achilles heel of this country's dream of making rapid economic strides to fight poverty and to remain lodged on a relatively high growth trajectory. It is instructive to note that in spite of the economic reforms of 1991, the power industry has not been able to attract the expected level of private investment, domestic or foreign. True, the particularly worrisome state of electricity availability in southern India, and in Maharashtra, in recent months has been brought about by a jumbling of local factors. Relatively depressed rainfall in the monsoon months has contributed to the inadequacies of the hydel sector in the region. But there is no getting away from the uncomfortable truth that the acute electricity deficit being experienced in the South currently is a subset of a larger nationwide reality. In Maharashtra, there have been no new powerhouses in the last five years and the state may be suffering from a 30 per cent deficit in relation to demand. In this state, probably the most industrialised in the country, 250,000 industries now get power only five days a week. Rural areas have no power for 12 to 14 hours a day. In Bengaluru, the power supply is to be reduced by as much as 20 per cent, the government has announced. This is a city right up there in the eyes of the world given its super information technology status. The condition in the rest of Karnataka is qualitatively no better. There has been an explosion at the 210 MW Raichur thermal plant, hitting output. Bellary-I, a new thermal unit, is yet to deliver. In Andhra Pradesh, the government has directed all industries to remain shut two days in the week. One can straightaway sense a deceleration round the corner in both industrial and agricultural output. The 440 MW Kalpakkam atomic power station in Tamil Nadu is producing no more than 190 MW on account of the shortage of uranium, which is the fuel. The generation at Neyveli Lignite Corporation is short by 650 million units on account of shortage of lignite. The 300 MW Sabavagiri power project in Kerala collapsed in May and is expected to take two years to be revived. Where do we go from here? For the 11th Five-Year Plan (200712), the government has set a capacity addition target of 78,597 MW, with 11,061 MW to be produced in the current year. This appears a tall order, given the performance. In the past two months, the rate of growth in the power sector is a measly 1.7 per cent as against nine per cent in the same period last year. A McKinsey study suggests that India needs to spend $600 billion (Rs 24 lakh crores) by 2017 on adding capacity if a growth rate of eight per cent is to be envisaged because the demand for power is expected to soar from 120 GW now to about 335 GW in the coming decade.