ROI Based Training Framework for Discoms for Rural Electrification

The reforms of the Indian power sector started 18 years ago with the enactment of the electricity act for “promoting competition therein, protecting the interest of consumers and supply of electricity to all areas”. However, despite many measures to promote competition, many bottlenecks still exist to achieve sustainable, Affordable and Reliable power for end consumers, especially in rural electrification.

Many policies have aimed towards Rural Electrification, and universal access with an estimated total investment of more than 1700 billion to DISCOMs as DISCOMs are the retailer for the end consumer. But DISCOMs are mired in many difficulties with huge accumulated debts, una ble to pay generators on time, and seen as the most significant barrier towards Sustainable, affordable, and reliable power. The physical discipline of DISCOMs in controlling AT&C loss and the political economy of DISCOMs affecting the reduction of ACS-ARR gap is studied in detail in many literatures. However, the capacity building of DISCOMs, be it its own training or various training programme sponsored by Govt of India under RE (Rural Electrification) schemes and its return was not studied. Shortage of financial resources and reasonable allocation necessitates organisations to know the training programme's value and, thus, its return on investment (ROI). Therefore, there is no denying that the framework of ROI based Training in DISCOMs improves its ability to address various challenges such as reformative measures for financial turnaround of DISCOMs encompassing the reliability, resilience and customer-centric approach.

This paper aims to study the ROI based framework in DISCOMs for the effectiveness of rural electrification training in India. The author summarised the experiences of experts on a collection of cost and benefit, analysing of data for ROI meeting challenge of converting intangible cost and intangible benefit to numbers and the isolation of effect of Training. The framework will be instrumental for DISCOMs to decide on training investment based on its intended Return on Investment. This will help to evaluate the effectiveness of RE schemes and Distribution reforms schemes of MoP, GoI such as Revamped Distribution Scheme (RDS), which traditionally funds significant Training in DISCOMs under the capacity building and enabling components.