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Delhi's power crisis of 1984

S. Venkitaramanan

A DECADE and a half ago, I landed in Delhi as the Secretary to Government in charge of Power. Then, New Delhi, as now, was at the centre of a power serious crisis. Power trips every hour, or even more often, were the order of the day.

The problem was serious enough to attract the attention of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. She called for a high-level meeting, to which many senior officials were invited. Dr. P. C. Alexander, now Governor of Maharashtra and the then Principal Secretary t o the Prime Minister, was, as usual, a source of support to young officials. While the Prime Minister's questions were clear, she was responsive to suggestions for improvement. What I remember quite clearly is that the meeting initiated a number of high- level discussions and, above all, actions on the ground. Fortunately, we were not totally unprepared. We had also assembled a small group in the department, including representatives from the Planning Commission, the NTPC and the Oil Ministry.

What became clear was that Delhi power crisis was, in a sense, a microcosm of India's overall problem. We had worked out some ad hoc solutions. In our view, it was not possible to find a stable solution to the power situation in Delhi and in the rest of India, unless an immediate addition of energy was tried. In Delhi, in particular, we needed an addition of nearly 300 MW. Delhi was not getting its share of the central power stations, such as the NTPC units at Singrauli; it was being appropriated by the intervening States, such as UP.

Our group felt that the only way we could restore order to the power situation in Delhi was to instal, within as short a time as physically possible -- which was an year or an year and a half -- an additional power generation facility in Delhi of the order of 200-300 MW, which would be exclusively for the capital. Conventional coal-based stations would take at least three years to get set up. We had necessarily to switch over to diesel-based gas turbine, which could be set up in a shorter time, such as 18 months. After a great deal of technical discussions, we came to the conclusion that a solution was available in the form of combined cycle gas turbine, which reused the waste heat.

The Prime Minister agreed that the project, if feasible, should be proceeded with immediately and it should be established at the location of the Delhi Power Station. The most important question to be resolved was, however, about the use of liquid fuel o r gas. This was against the existing policy, which had declared using petro fuels only for production of petro-chemicals -- a policy that made sense in an overall economic sense, except for the fact that we were now faced with an imminent cr isis.

The view that ultimately prevailed was that in the circumstances in which Delhi was placed, there was no alternative to setting up a combined gas cycle heat recovery based turbines, to run on high speed diesel, pending allocation of gas. Further, power c ould not be imported, while petrochemicals could be. This is a brief summary of a rather complex argument. But, in effect, the Prime Minister's initiative in regard to Delhi helped to formulate governmental thinking clearly. Many committees and discussio ns followed. But the New Delhi Gas Turbine Station was set up within 18 months and power started flowing to the Delhi grid.

The process by which these decisions were converted into governmental orders and so on was, of course, complicated. The support of the Prime Minister, and the Cabinet Secretary and the Principal Secretary enabled these decisions easily. A team led by Mr. Jairam Ramesh, who was an Adviser to the Planning Commission, and Dr. Vijay Kelkar, then Economic Adviser to the Petroleum Minister, also played an important role in assembling a report which proved that not only was the conversion to use of gas inevita ble, but that it was also the only way to solve the energy problem of the country as a whole.

The team discussed alternatives, such as import of coal and raising the large amounts of coal needed. The problem in all these cases was the time constraint in establishing coal-based stations. Long-term planning in energy had to be undertaken in all ser iousness. The Fertiliser Ministry argued that the use of gas for power would handicap the fertiliser factories on the HBJ gas pipeline. Anyway, the ministers in charge, first Mr. P. Shiv Shankar and later Mr. Arun Nehru, were also solidly in favour of ut ilisation of gas for power production. Mr. V. P. Singh, who became the Finance Minister later, was also in favour of the above proposition.

Today, we talk very glibly about installing so many gas-based power stations. It was important that Indira Gandhi did not ignore the Delhi power crisis as something to be dealt with by technocrats. I recall a remark she made at the beginning of the meeti ng that every year the electricity people would tell her that there would be no power shortage and every year there was a crisis. She said she did not wish to hear this nonsense any more. Truly, a leader of the people, she took decisions on the spot and gave us the confidence to go ahead.

There were many problems which had to be solved before the Indraprastha Plant became a reality. There was the inevitable argument that the decision to move over to petroleum-fuel based power meant greater import dependence, while coal was indigenous. Sop histicated arguments followed in the manner in which only Governmental Committees can complete the issue. But I must record here the debt of gratitude, which all of us felt we owed to the then Secretary to the Planning Commission, Mr. K. V. Ramanathan, w ho ably steered the discussions without missing the focus of the dispute.

As I reflect on the crisis of 1984 and the way it was resolved, I wish there were more leaders of the type of Indira Gandhi to tackle today's power imbroglio. She was bold enough to take a major decision -- controversial though it was -- to deny gas t o certain powerful lobbies for the sake of greater good of India. The decisions that she took led to a complete transformation of India's power scene.