Improved Electricity Access to Indian Slum Dwellers

The city of Mumbai has over 6 million slum dwellers, a large number of whom do not have access to legal electricity service. The utility serving the area – Reliance Energy – has a customer base of 5 million in Mumbai, Delhi and Orissa. It is working in cooperation with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to increase the take up of legal and safe electricity connections in slum areas of Mumbai. The objective of the project is to demonstrate the use of an output-based aid (OBA) approach to make a significant difference to the level of access to safe and adequate electricity supply in the Indian slum context. Successful demonstration will lead to substantial potential for scale-up in slum communities in Mumbai, across India and in other large urban slum environments around the world.

The World Bank has signed a GPOBA grant agreement with Reliance Infrastructure Ltd.

This project should result in approximately 26,250 safe and legal electricity connections.

GPOBA will pay subsidies to cover part of the slum dweller's costs, and will do so in an output based form.

Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. (acting as facilitator for disbursement of the grant to consumers). All grant funds will cover costs normally incurred by slum dwellers.

"A" see also:http://go.worldbank.org/6NLFAXBXW0 [3]

Mani Khurana [4]