Colossal waste in India - 3

This is once again another bitter truth about Indian govt incompetence that is leading to huge national waste.

They could have saved thousands of millions of rupees every year if only they had the foresight to frame simple economic fiscal policies.

Take the energy saving lamps. By simply giving free import license to import duty free the components for these lamps, the government could have encouraged so many small scale industries to make these lamps at a low and sell into the market. The excise duty should also be removed. The loss in revenue would have been a few hundred crores to the government. But the savings in terms of energy costs to the nation would have been 10 times or more.

Here is a simple example. Lets say there are 100 million poor households who have the present incandescent lamps. Lets say these poor homes consume 1 unit of electricity a day. That is 365 units er year.

For 100 million homes, it would be 36,500 million units a year.

If the energy saving lamps are used , one can save 80% of this energy consumed.
Which is nearly 30,000 million units of electricity per year.

Thats a lot of savings. at the cost of Rs 2 a unit it works out to 60,000 million rupees.
Or Rs 6000 crores per annum in savings. Most of it in imported oil costs.

Mind you, we are taking a conservative figure of 100 million households with just 2 light bulbs. The figure could be much much more.

But you see, to do these pro-active policies, you need forward thinking minsters and bureaucrats. Not text book oriented sahibs. And all it require is some minor tax policy adjustments.

India lacks pro-active forward thinking ministers . Hence we end up wasting huge amounts of money and pay to foreign Arab countries for the oil that we import to waste in our country, due to text book quoting theoretical and non-practical leaders who are often wrongly venerated as great experts in good policy and economic administration.
Which they are not.

I agree very much on this.

Well.. this is very true.

I always think that a mere bulb by replacing it with CFL can make a huge difference. I see that at my home. We got 40% reduction in our overall electricity bills when we replaced every bulb at home with CFL ..
I agree.. 100%

I am agreeing too. We lack visionary leaders. I think we should have a platform where we can invite all such great ideas and let them voted upon, let them scrutinize them from all angle and if found suitable implement them in our policies.

That is the right word..
We lake Visionary Leaders

Mr. APJ Kalam was a visionary leader but sadly these political people do not wanted him back but 90% of Janta wanted him again to be President.

The bulb of contention
Sujit Kumar Singh
CFLs score over normal bulbs, but mercury is the sore point that needs to be addressed.

If households in Delhi replace four ordinary bulbs with four compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs), their annual savings would be around Rs 273 crore. Startling figure. The highly energy inefficient incandescent light bulb is on its way out.
Replacing it is the new-generation and more energy-efficient CFL. Brazil and Venezuela initiated the process of phasing out incandescent bulbs. Australia plans to do it by 2010 and Canada by 2012. Other countries—New Zealand, Netherlands, US—are also planning to phase out incandescent bulbs.
In India, however, there is no formal plan to phase out ordinary bulbs yet. There is a debate over the amount of mercury that CFLs may emit and concerns regarding its disposal. But pro-CFL groups say that mercury emissions from thermal-based power plants are much higher, and hence, the fears are unfounded. Given the power crisis in the country, it is only feasible to convert to CFLs.
CFLs contain small amount of mercury—about 3-4 milligramme (mg). While mercury gives the CFLs an added glow, it is also toxic. High levels of mercury intake can damage the brain, the reproductive system, foetuses and cause behavioural problems. It has a tendency to bio-magnify in natural conditions.
However, there are advantages because CFLs help in curbing greenhouse gases.
Hence, the question that emerges is how will CFLs impact the environment after they exhaust 7,000 hours of life? Calculations prove that mercury emission from CFLs will be 4.32 times lower than incandescent ones, considering if electricity is supplied to incandescent bulbs by coal-based thermal power plants.
It is estimated that India will save around 12,000 MW and reduce CO2 emissions by 4 per cent. According to Greenpeace, “if all regular bulbs in India were to change to CFL, 55 million tonnes of carbon emissions could be avoided”, which is equal to 30 per cent of the emissions of all vehicles in India.
According to Delhi’s electricity provider, BSES, around 400,000 CFLs have been distributed under the ‘buy one, get one free CFL’ scheme. Delhi has saved 25 MW.
Not much reason why the rest of the country shouldn’t follow, but with a proper disposal mechanism in place.

You mean that when we destroy Used CFL, it has small amount of Mercury which can be harmful or when it is used it emits mercury ?
well.. disposal is very important but in India when we are not able to keep track of things we use then how you can expect proper disposal ie. track of things which we are not in use .