Report by Kamgar Ekta Committee (KEC) correspondent
Several organisations came together in Mumbai on Sunday, July 7, 2024 under the banner of Vidyut Smart Meter Virodhi Kruti Samiti (Action Committee for Opposing Electricity Smart Meters), and declared that they would fight against the installation of smart electricity meters till the Scheme is withdrawn.
Adv. Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar (Ex-Mayor, Mumbai) welcomed all the participants. She explained why the smart meters would be disastrous for consumers and electricity workers alike and welcomed the eminent speakers as well as honoured guests to the stage. These included Shri Ashok Kumar, Member of the All India Council of the Lok Raj Sangathan, Mr. Arvind Tiwari, (Adv. Supreme Court and High Court), Shri Vitthalrao Gaikwad (General Secretary Mumbai Electricity Workers Union, Shri Suhas Samant (President, BEST Kamgar Sena) and Shri Girish (Joint Secretary, Kamgar Ekta Committee). Smt. Vidya Chavan (ex MLA), Mr. Aveen Gubbi, Assistant Treasurer, K.P.T.C. Employees Union (who had come with his colleague, Mr. Harish all the way from Bengaluru specifically for the meeting) also briefly addressed the gathering.
The hall was packed to capacity with women and men from all walks of life. They eagerly bought the informative booklet brought out by 46 organisations, including Kamgar Ekta Committee and Lok Raj Sangathan, from all over the country exposing the reality of smart meters and the nefarious plan of the monopoly corporations behind their introduction. Some people had come to learn about the impending attack. Others had already seen their electricity bills doubled and tripled after the installation of smart meters in Mumbai and could later be seen angrily denouncing the leaders of all the political parties who had pursued privatisation, whenever they were in power, since 1991. After the speeches were over, time was given to the participants to ask questions or express their views.
The meeting was well structured, with clearly delineated topic for all speakers. We will highlight some of the important points they made.
What is the Smart Meter Scheme?
Seeing the growing opposition to smart meters building up against it from different parts of the state, and keeping the impending state elections in mind, the Maharashtra Government has declared that smart meters will not be installed for domestic and other small consumers. This is obviously false, as are other pre-election promises, because the installation of smart meters is a part of the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme (RDSS), which was launched by the Central Government in July 2021 and no state government can override the Central Government’s Scheme.
The budget for the RDSS is Rs. 3 lakh crore. 25 crore smart meters are to be installed as per the scheme all over the country for consumers other than agricultural consumers. This means more than 125 crore people will get covered. Apart from smart meters, the RDSS also covers the upgradation of the electricity distribution sector.
There is a proviso that smart meters will be installed only via public-private partnership (PPP). Government owned Discoms (Distribution Companies) cannot install smart meters on their own under the Scheme. The Central government will give an incentive of Rs. 900 per smart meter, and Rs. 1200 per smart meter in the north eastern and hill states to the Discom.
The scheme is designed such that Discoms like Mahavitaran in Maharashtra will not have to spend any money for installation and operation of smart meters.
It is not just a question of replacing the existing meters with the smart meters. There is a lot of technology involved, including setting up the hardware and software needed for their operation. The scheme will be under the DBFOOT (Design, Build, Finance, Operate, Own and Transfer) model. In Maharashtra it is said that the private company will own and operate the system for 93 months, after which the ownership will revert to the government. However, we know how much this assurance is worth! Once it is in private hands, it is unlikely to revert to the public sector.
As far as Maharashtra is concerned, all the orders for smart meter scheme for most of the districts have been awarded to Tata, NCC, Montecarlo, and Genus. It is evident that no capitalist will get involved unless there is a possibility of making super profits.
It is important for us consumers to understand that these profits will be squeezed out of us!
So far 1.24 crore smart meters have been installed all over the country. In Mumbai, in BEST’s distribution area, the order has been given to Adani Transmission which has installed 2,63,275 smart meters so far whereas Mahavitaran (Discom) has installed 2944 smart meters on trial basis.
Why are smart meters anti-people?
Governments are going out of their way to tell us consumers that we will benefit by installation of smart meters. It is important for us to understand that these assurances are a pack of lies spread at the behest of the monopoly capitalists who stand to benefit from them.
Today we get credit on our monthly electricity bill for a period of twenty days after the billing cycle of one month. However, smart meters under the RDSS are to be prepaid. This means that we will have to “charge” the smart meter like we do our cellphones, or in other words pay the capitalist distribution company before we use the power! This means that our budgets go for a toss, while the capitalist gets thousands of crores of rupees interest-free money by way of the advance paid by consumers.
Once the “charge” gets used up, the power will be remotely switched off. Even after we charge the meter, it may take a few hours to a few days before the power is restored. There will be no one nearby who we can complain to. Even if the bills are grossly inflated, they will insist that we pay before the complaint is even looked into to get the power supply restored. This is already the experience of consumers who get electricity from private distribution companies.
The Central government has announced the plan to introduce Time of Day (ToD) tariff system from the end of 2025. Under the ToD system, the power rate will be lower by 10-20% during the sunshine hours and higher by 10-20% after sunshine hours. This is being widely promoted as beneficial for consumers. It is claimed that consumers could use power when it is cheaper, and refrain when it is more expensive. This argument is totally bogus, because rates will be high when the demand is high, just as it is today for train or plane tickets. How can consumers sit at home instead of going for work and use power during the afternoons when it is cheaper instead of in the evenings or nights. The ToD tariff system cannot be implemented without smart meters. Smart meters will allow the company to change its power rates throughout the day, hour by hour, if need be.
The RDSS proposes to stop all subsidies and if any subsidy is to be given to a group of consumers, the state government must give it through the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system. This means every consumer must first pay the full rate for power supply. We all know what a big fraud the DBT system was in the case of gas cylinders! This case will be no different.
Smart meters will enable the company to increase the tariff quietly. Already the bills have shot up where they have been installed. Consumers find that what they paid earlier for a month is getting used up in a week!
Smart meters will have a limited life, and of course the burden of new meter will be put on the backs of the consumers!
Whether meters will be prepaid or not is beside the point. Even if they are post-paid to start with, they can be converted to prepaid with a simple computer command!
Governments are lying when they claim that smart meters will be free. They will be charged in installments through electricity charges.
Why are smart meters anti-worker?
The installation of smart meters will render many workers redundant, for example, meter readers, those working in the Billing department, bill distributors, bill collectors, those who work on disconnecting and restarting connections, meter testing, and so on. Likewise, private cash collectors will no longer be needed.
Further, the whole RDSS scheme is a step in the direction of privatisation of electricity distribution. We know the bad effects of privatisation on workers – job cuts or at least pay cuts, onerous working conditions, neglect of safety, no benefits, etc. Privatisation also leads to increased contractualisation, the replacement of permanent jobs by contract ones, and thus is an attack on future generations of the working class as well.
We also should not forget that electricity workers also pay for the electricity they consume, and will have to face all the bad effects as consumers!
Who benefits from the RDSS?
Over 60% of electricity generation in our country is already in private hands and is extremely lucrative for the big monopolies like Tatas, Adani, Goenka, Jindal and Torrent involved in power generation. These big monopolies want to control the power distribution which so far is mainly in the hands of state owned Discoms. The RDSS will ensure that government’s (that is people’s) money will be used for the upgradation of distribution before it is handed over on a platter to private companies. The RDSS will also ensure that there are no over-due bills consumers for supply of power. This will make the distribution sector financially very attractive for Tatas, Adani, Torrent, Goenka, Jindal, etc.
PIL in the High Court
Shri Arvind Tiwari talked about the public interest litigation (PIL) lodged in the Mumbai High Court on behalf of Smt. Nirmala Samant Prabhavalkar as well as Shri Harshad Swar, asking that consumers should be given a choice between prepaid and postpaid meters.
How the BEST (Brihanmumbai Electricity Supply and Transport) is being ruined.
Governments over the years have clearly gone ahead with wrecking the BEST in order to create justification for the privatisation of the lucrative transport sector in Mumbai. The number of permanent workers in Electricity department has been brought down from 8,000 to 2,500. In the whole of BEST, including the transport department, the number has been reduced to 26,000 from 45,000.
In most parts of Mumbai, electricity distribution is already privatized. It is in the hands of Tata and Adani. The government claims that privatization and competition in distribution sector will make electric supply cheaper. How true this claim is can be judged from the fact that he power rates in Mumbai are among the highest in the country where private companies have been distributing for over fifty years!
The fight against smart meters.
There are two aspects of this fight, short term as well as long term, and we will have to take both into account.
In the short term, we have to make this fight even stronger by holding more such awareness programs, by disseminating the literature that we have already produced, by using all types of media. We should approach all sorts of organisations and try to raise a strong, united campaign. We should do this irrespective of the ideology that they subscribe to.
We should challenge the thinking that electricity should be a source of profiteering. Basic services like electricity, transport, supply of water, health, education and sanitation services cannot be regarded as a source of profit!
The government is giving up its responsibility to ensure basic services to everyone at affordable rates. The government collects taxes only because it has the duty of ensuring a good life for all. Indirect taxes are paid by all, no matter how poor they are. They form the largest fraction of taxes.
The smart metering scheme will deprive many people of our country of electricity, which is a basic necessity today. We workers and toilers must insist on policies which would ensure that no citizen of the country is deprived of electricity.
Our long term objective
We should remember that every political party in power has carried out further privatisation of electricity, ever since the launch of LPG (globalisation through liberalisation and privatisation) in 1991. All state governments, irrespective party in power, are implementing smart meter scheme, even now as we are speaking.
This is because privatisation is the agenda of big monopoly capitalists. They dictate policies to be implemented. They decide, by way of funding and through their control over media, which party should be in power in Centre. When in “opposition”, parties in parliament make a big drama of raising people’s voices, but in once they form the government, they dance to the tune of the biggest monopoly capitalists.
Moreover, the decisions most vital to the people like demonetisation, privatisation of a particular enterprise, and so on, are taken outside parliament, and RDSS is no exception.
Having the right to vole gives the illusion of democracy, but in reality, people have no say in how the country is run. Our so-called representatives are not accountable to us. They have to rubber-stamp the decisions of the |High Commands of their respective parties. The present political and electoral system has been designed to keep people out of power. That is why the present system cannot and will not give what people want.
We must understand that it is the capitalist class that is ruling our country. Our economy is oriented to maximising the profits of the capitalist. Within the ruling class, the interests of the biggest capitalists are supreme. The biggest monopoly houses head the ruling class. It is not just about Ambani and Adani. There are about 150 big families include Tata, Birla, Mafatlal, Mittal and others as well as Ambani and Adani, whose interests are supreme.
We can certainly stop the installation of smart meters as long as we fight unitedly and strongly. We must do that! We must fight for rooting out the RDSS, opposing privatisation in any form, and with the perspective of preparing the workers, peasants and all the working and oppressed people to be rulers of our country!
After the main speakers many participants enthusiastically expressed their views and asked questions that were answered by the experts on the dais.
The following resolutions were proposed and unanimously passed.
“Today, the 7th July 2024, we the citizens of Mumbai who have gathered here declare that we do not accept the installation of smart electricity meters under any pretext. This scheme is anti-people and anti-workers and a step towards the further privatisation of electricity, and that is why we totally oppose it.”
“We also declare that electricity is a basic necessity and that is why it is the primary duty of the government to provide it to all citizens at affordable rates. We do not accept electricity to be looked upon as a source of profit.”
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