Rural Electrification Planning–A Goal Programming Approach

The human need and desire for comfort forced him to look for technological innovations and these innovations lead to development. In the present scenario, availability of electricity is a basic need as these technological inventions are highly dependent on electric current. In today's circumstances, life in urban areas without electricity is unimaginable. Despite, such fast pace growth in rural areas, some of the villages/habitations are still in the dark. They live in the sun light and light their house with candles in the evening. The life starts with sunrise and ends with sunset. Technological interventions and development in these areas are not possible until and unless electric current is available.

Day by day, while the demand of electricity has been increasing, there is shortage of power generation with respect to its demand. When there is a shortfall of resource availability and the demand is more, planning has a major role to play. With respect to electrification of villages, for an inclusive development, all the villages should be electrified. To this effect, the Union Government and State Governments have initiated various schemes for the same. The decision of whether the village should be electrified cannot be taken based on a single parameter like population or number of households. This needs a consideration of other associated parameters for a better planning. Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) models play a major role in this regard. This paper illustrates use of goal programming, a MCDA model, with respect to development planning for rural electrification.