The grid comes alive

Summary: India’s power sector spent more than a decade trapped by financially broken utilities and stalled investment, despite rising electricity demand. Here is how reforms, surging power consumption and the renewable-energy buildout combined to finally revive the sector and reshape the fortunes of power and equipment companies alike.

Summary: India’s power sector spent more than a decade trapped by financially broken utilities and stalled investment, despite rising electricity demand. Here is how reforms, surging power consumption and the renewable-energy buildout combined to finally revive the sector and reshape the fortunes of power and equipment companies alike. The BSE Power index peaked in January 2008, collapsed, and spent the next 14 years going nowhere. The root cause was not a shortage of electricity demand; it was a broken customer. State electricity distribution companies (DISCOMs) were technically bankrupt, buying power at market rates and selling it below cost for political reasons. Aggregate technical and commercial losses ran at 23.7 per cent in FY2016. Power companies could not collect what they were owed, equipment manufacturers had no buyers, and the entire value chain froze. Reform before revival The revival began with governance, not demand. The Ujwal DISCOM Assurance Yojana (UDAY), launched in 2015, enabled states to absorb 75 per cent of DISCOM liabilities through low-interest bonds and pushed operational reform.

This article was originally published on June 01, 2026.