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New Delhi’s electricity thieves

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India’s capital New Delhi has long suffered from a particular crime: electricity theft. For a fee, residents and businesses can hire electricians to bypass meters and plug directly in to the grid for free. But the private companies now running New Delhi’s power plants have started to fight back. Reporter Elliot Hannon takes us on a power raid outside New Delhi.

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JEB SHARP: Meanwhile to another aspect of life in India you may not think about much – electricity. It’s a huge problem for the country’s government since almost half of all Indians, especially the rural poor, still don’t have electricity. But even in the relatively prosperous capital, New Delhi, the electric grid struggles to keep up and power outages are a regular part of life. One reason has to do with a longtime black market commodity in New Delhi – free, un-metered electricity pulled illegally from the grid. Reporter Elliot Hannon has the story of a power company that’s fighting back.

ELLIOT HANNON: On a dark, empty street in an industrial neighborhood in New Delhi, Maneesh Aurora and his men sit in a small van outside a crumbling factory. Aurora suspects it’s illegally stealing power from the grid. The business only operates at night so Maneesh and his crew have gathered a team to try to catch the factory workers in the act. Maneesh’s are all wearing dress shirts and slacks. By day they’re engineers for BSES, one of New Delhi’s private power companies. Tonight they bring a police escort incase things go wrong in the raid. Finally they muscle open the door and with pliers in hand they enter a windowless room. It smells like burning plastic. Maneesh and his engineers shine their flashlights on every dangling wire. The factory only has two workers who seem confused and just return the machine in the corner. It spits out spaghetti-like cords of aqua-blue plastic in a tub of water then dices them into bits that will later be turned into plastic bags. They take out a video camera and begin describing the evidence for their case.

MANEESH AURORA: These are illegal wires which is feeding all the complete load. Supply is feeding to this mixer.

HANNON: What Maneesh and his crew have found here isn’t at all unusual in New Delhi. Kamaljeet Rattan is spokesman for BSES. He says the Indian capital has long been a city of power thieves.

KAMALJEET RATTAN: Everyone. I mean you can’t blame those who stay in the slums. You can’t just blame the industry. You can’t just blame the traders and the shop owners. You can’t just even blame the elite of the elite. I mean everyone was into power theft. That’s why you had a situation that almost 64% of the power supply was never got billed.

HANNON: Until seven years ago the Indian government ran the power companies here and the energy sector was awash in corruption. For 50 rupees or about a dollar, customers could have a private electrician help them bypass their meters. As a result the utility was starved of funds to improve its infrastructure and electricity was scarce.

RATTAN: People have short memories. But the fact is Delhi used to have power cuts for 8 to 12 to 13 hours every day. Suddenly the lights would go off.

HANNON: By 2002 the state-run power company found itself three billion dollars in the hole so the government finally privatized the distribution of power. The company BSES took control of two thirds of the city’s grid and began investing heavily in infrastructure. They replaced old wires and installed new meters. Along with that came a new crackdown on power theft.

Back at the plastics factory the crew from BSES hack away at an illegal meter. They’ll need it for evidence in court. So they rip it from the wall. By now the factory no longer has electricity so Maneesh Aurora and his crew leave it in the dark. They head back to write a police report and to get ready for another raid tomorrow. For The World I’m Elliot Hannon in New Delhi.

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