Ten days after power supply in India's capital was handed over to private companies — in the hope of tackling the serious problem of theft — it is becoming apparent that this attempt at privatisation is going to be no cake-walk.

These were 10 trying days and nights for Delhi's 13 million residents. Many of them are beginning to walk around like zombies for lack of sleep in July's sweltering, heat-wave conditions unrelieved by the whirr of fans.

''I get to office late every day because it is only in the morning hours that the temperature cools down enough to sleep without a fan going,'' says Jeet Kalra, who ironically enough works for the Delhi Vidyut Board (DVB), the government utility that was privatised form the beginning of July.

Kalra is willing to admit what many of his 25,000 colleagues are reluctant to scuttle the whole privatisation plan.

''Many of us simply cannot do without the illegal incomes that can be made by looking the other way as people steal electricity. ''

It is estimated that some US$300 million worth of the electricity supplied to the capital is simply siphoned away, theft that is facilitated by corrupt officials and politicians who are against privatisation or any kind of reform which would take away their large illegal incomes.

A walk through the crowded lanes of the city will show electric poles haphazardly festooned with cables that tap electricity illegally. In the slums and poorer sections of the city, hooks attached to wires are simply flung onto overhead lines everytime someone needs electricity.

For decades, it has been an open secret that a large number of industries pay officials to tap large amounts of electricity. It has been shown that up to 40 percent of the electricity sent to Delhi vanishes as it passes through the industrial district of Okhla.

Another 10 to 15 percent is tapped by people living in posh districts, where air conditioners are run on stolen electricity and the power that is actually billed for is sold at subsidised rates. The subsidies are due to be phased out — and as expected, it is not going to be a popular move.

Election promise

But both Delhi's chief minister Sheila Dixit and the state's power minister Ajay Maken have sworn that there would be no going back on the privatisation because power reforms were an election promise made to users who pay for their electricity.

The DVB has already been carrying out a campaign in slums and illegal colonies, urging people to pay for their electricity.

Jagdish Sagar, the utility's chief, said: ''We have been organising camps. You will find people now willing to take metres with a little persuasion and we have been providing new connections at double the old rates.''

Maken admitted that there were ''deliberate delays'' in responding to complaints and rectifying faults by the staff of the DVB, many of whom have asked to be transferred to other government departments.

The government is also working towards 'anti-theft' legislation as demanded by the Tata Power Company and the Bombay State Electricity Services (BSES), the two companies that have taken over electricity supply from the DVB.

A petition challenging the privatisation has been filed in the Delhi High Court by the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (Indian Workers' Union ), which is affiliated to the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that rules India at the centre.

Maken calls the move a ''clear case of political lobbies siding with power thieves''.

According to Sagar, once these ''teething problems'' are over both companies stand to make profits, the size of which depends on their ability to persuade their clients to pay for the electricity they consume.

Meanwhile, there are signs that unless the power companies do something drastic about ensuring steady power supplies, riots could break out.

Recently police had to intervene to save insolent officials of the former DVB from being beaten up by irate consumers because they were not attending to their phones.

Critical stage

Delhi's chief secretary, Shailaja Chandra, has been holding discussions with police commissioner R S Gupta on adequate measures to ensure the safety of personnel manning the newly privatised utilities that are perceived to be deliberately engineering the shortages and poor services.

The success of DVB's privatisation, till recently India's largest single power utility, is planned to be a model for the rest of country to follow, says Union Power Minister Suresh Prabhu, a former chartered accountant who said he would like to see a ''total energy audit'' in the national capital.

Naturally, this has made Prabhu unpopular among those who have benefitted for years from a system of total — some would say criminal — lack of accountability that institutions starting with the World Bank have been trying to address for years with little success.

Prabhu estimates that transmission and distribution losses cost the national exchequer US$4 billions annually, with much of it caused by large industrial units that find it far cheaper to bribe officials and politicians rather than pay their bills.

The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA), which released in April a study 'Electricity in India — providing power for the millions,'' has warned that the power situation in the country has reached a ''critical stage''.

The central issue, the IEA said, was one of ''ensuring that power utilities can earn a fair return on investment''.

It also commented that utilities in many states were on the verge of bankruptcy because political interference made them unable to collect revenues. — IPS