http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-31/world-s-greatest-power-thieves-keep-400-million-indians-in-dark.htmlTo run his fan, lamp and small television, Sikander strings a homemade wire hook over power cables outside his one-room New Delhi house, helping perpetrate the world’s biggest energy heist.
“The cables are right there, it’s really easy to take it,” said Sikander, 26, who uses only one name and earns less than $2 a day cleaning people’s ears on the streets of the Indian capital. “You have to be very careful when it rains because you can get electrocuted tying the wires together.”
About one-third of the 174 gigawatts of electricity generated in India annually is either stolen or dissipates in the conductors and transmission equipment that form the country’s distribution grid, Power Secretary P. Uma Shankar said in an interview. That’s more than any other nation, according to a 2010 report by Deloitte LLP analysts that also estimated India’s losses at 32 percent. In China the rate was 8 percent.
The pilfering of almost enough power to charge California for a year lowers the annual income of Indian distribution companies by $16 billion and cuts output by 1.2 percent in the $1.3 trillion economy, India’s Planning Commission says.
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