Hours of daily load-shedding have led power experts to hazard their suggestions for improving things. There is no consensus among them. But what is not in doubt is the wide-ranging adverse effects of outage on the daily lives of the people as well as on the economy, as lighting is not the only function of electricity. There are a number of suggestions on offer in the market; the interaction programme held in the capital on Monday represented just a sampling — the privatisation of the Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA), amendment to the Electricity Act, construction of new hydropower plants, putting an end to the play of commission, dissolution of the tariff fixation committee, and increasing participation of the private sector, and promotion of storage-type hydropower plants.

Experts differ over whether NEA should be privatised as a solution. At a time when economic liberalisation is the order of the day, some people have tended to see in privatisation the panacea for all ills. And this trend has caught on in the energy sector too. Privatisation is generally thought to boost efficiency, a better use of resources, and lead to minimum waste and an improvement in services. Admittedly, NEA leaves a lot to be desired, but at the same time a privatisation of public utilities or corporations does not automatically ensure that the general people benefit as a result. There is a need to put in place a number of safeguards to prevent private operators from reaping unfair advantages, such as those of monopoly. Even where there are several players in the fray, they have tended to form syndicates, at best compete in certain aspects and collude in others such as pricing their goods or services in a way certain to collect as much profit as possible at the cost of the consumer.

Nepali consumers continue to suffer from a host of unholy alliances. And those in government need to do much more on this front. For the past several years, the private sector, too, has been generating power and selling the output to the national power grid. Indeed, there are allegations that the power the NEA is buying from private operators is at a rate higher than fair. As part of its ‘unbundling’ process of the power sector, the government has moved to entrust separate agencies with such functions as generation, transmission, distribution and price fixing. Experts also disagree over the relative merits of this scheme. However, public participation in NEA’s stakes could be increased by floating shares, without the risks that go with the ownership of such a sensitive service by a handful of business biggies.