By Florence Au
India is a country of great diversity and
contradictions. In a country of 1.1 billion people, there were 465
million mobile subscribers at the end of September 2009. Yet, in the same
period India also had the largest number of people in the world without access
to electricity. The per capita electricity consumption rate in India is 480Wh/capita in 2005; lower
than the rates of Brazil, Zimbabwe and Mexico, among other developing
countries. In response to this challenge, the Indian government has
launched an ambitious new program to provide electricity to 100% of households
by 2012.
