A glimmer of hope

UDAY does well, but needs to step up work in laggard states

There is emerging evidence that the Ministry of Power’s Ujwal Discom Assurance Yojana or UDAY has started to yield results. Ever since its launch in November 2015, UDAY has been tracked with extreme interest by policy observers as the scheme was attempting to do what two previous governments — in September 2003 and September 2012 — had failed to do. The central purpose of UDAY is to improve the financial health of state-owned power distribution companies. This goal is supposed to be achieved by improving operational performance, in particular by reducing the aggregate transmission and commercial (AT&C) losses, and bridging