Last week, on November 8, the power ministry said that India had a massive peak power deficit of -16.6% in 2007-08. Even in 2011-12, it was -10.6 %, it said.

“Through the multi pronged, comprehensive and aggressive interventions of the government, this deficit is near about wiped out, consistently over the last 3 years,” the ministry has said in a statement.

This was apparently in response to a tweet by the Mahila Congress on India’s power deficit.

But the power ministry’s own figures may well point to several other aspects that do not go well with the story of efficiency the government is claiming for itself.

Electricity demand growth is generally taken to be a real-time indicator of how well the economy is doing. A robust demand growth, availability growth and capacity utilisation of power plants, as well as a high peak power demand growth indicates a booming economy even if the power system was unable to meet the peak demand...................