IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v38y2010i11p7121-7129.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Getting reforms done in inhospitable institutional environments: untying a Gordian Knot in India's power distribution sector

Author

Listed:
  • Tankha, Sunil
  • Misal, Annasahed B.
  • Fuller, Boyd W.

Abstract

When grand institutional reforms based on idealized models are stalled by the poor institutional environments and difficult politics which often surround large infrastructure systems in developing countries, partial reforms whose design and implementation take into account the different interests of the key stakeholders can provide valuable and immediate benefits while moving these systems from low- towards higher-level equilibria. Strategically negotiated, experimentally partial and purposefully hybrid, these reforms are based on careful stakeholder analysis and strategic coalition building that avoid rigid positions based on idealized models. Our findings are based on a study of power sector reforms in India, where we performed a micro-level and in-depth analysis of a partial and innovative experiment which has allowed private sector participation in electricity distribution within a hostile institutional environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Tankha, Sunil & Misal, Annasahed B. & Fuller, Boyd W., 2010. "Getting reforms done in inhospitable institutional environments: untying a Gordian Knot in India's power distribution sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(11), pages 7121-7129, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:7121-7129
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301-4215(10)00560-4
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul L. Joskow, 1997. "Restructuring, Competition and Regulatory Reform in the U.S. Electricity Sector," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 11(3), pages 119-138, Summer.
    2. Xu Yi-Chong, 2004. "Electricity Reform in China, India and Russia," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 3200.
    3. Gratwick, Katharine Nawaal & Eberhard, Anton, 2008. "Demise of the standard model for power sector reform and the emergence of hybrid power markets," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(10), pages 3948-3960, October.
    4. Sharma, D. Parameswara & Nair, P. S. Chandramohanan & Balasubramanian, R., 2005. "Performance of Indian power sector during a decade under restructuring: a critique," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 33(4), pages 563-576, March.
    5. Dubash, Navroz K. & Rao, D. Narasimha, 2008. "Regulatory practice and politics: Lessons from independent regulation in Indian electricity," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(4), pages 321-331, December.
    6. Woo, Chi-Keung & Lloyd, Debra & Tishler, Asher, 2003. "Electricity market reform failures: UK, Norway, Alberta and California," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(11), pages 1103-1115, September.
    7. Eduardo A. Haddad & Jaime Bonet & Geoffrey J. D. Hewings, 2023. "Introduction and Overview," Advances in Spatial Science, in: Eduardo A. Haddad & Jaime Bonet & Geoffrey J. D. Hewings (ed.), The Colombian Economy and Its Regional Structural Challenges, chapter 0, pages 1-16, Springer.
    8. Singh, Anoop, 2006. "Power sector reform in India: current issues and prospects," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(16), pages 2480-2490, November.
    9. Daniele Checchi & Massimo Florio & Jorge Carrera, 2009. "Privatisation Discontent and Utility Reform in Latin America," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 45(3), pages 333-350.
    10. Bhattacharyya, Subhes C., 2007. "Power sector reform in South Asia: Why slow and limited so far?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(1), pages 317-332, January.
    11. Sharma, A.K. & Vohra, Ekta, 2008. "Foreign Direct Investment in the Electricity Sector: The Indian Perspective," The Electricity Journal, Elsevier, vol. 21(7), pages 63-79.
    12. Tishler, A. & Woo, C.K., 2006. "Likely failure of electricity deregulation: Explanation with application to Israel," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 845-856.
    13. Dossani, Rafiq, 2004. "Reorganization of the power distribution sector in India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(11), pages 1277-1289, July.
    14. Montek S. Ahluwalia, 2002. "Economic Reforms in India Since 1991: Has Gradualism Worked?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(3), pages 67-88, Summer.
    15. J. Luis Guasch, 2004. "Granting and Renegotiating Infrastructure Concessions : Doing it Right," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15024.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Tooraj Jamasb & Manuel Llorca & Pavan Khetrapal & Tripta Thakur, 2018. "Institutions and Performance of Regulated Firms: Evidence from Electric Utilities in the Indian States," Working Papers EPRG 1809, Energy Policy Research Group, Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.
    2. Antonio Estache & Caroline Philippe, 2012. "The Impact of Private Participation in Infrastructure in Developing Countries: Taking Stock of about 20 Years of Experience," Working Papers ECARES ECARES 2012-043, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    3. Jamasb, Tooraj & Llorca, Manuel & Khetrapal, Pavan & Thakur, Tripta, 2021. "Institutions and performance of regulated firms: Evidence from electricity distribution in India," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 68-82.
    4. Bhatt, Brijesh & Singh, Anoop, 2021. "Power sector reforms and technology adoption in the Indian electricity distribution sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(PA).
    5. Jamasb, Tooraj & Thakur, Tripta & Bag, Baidyanath, 2018. "Smart electricity distribution networks, business models, and application for developing countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 22-29.
    6. Yadav, Vinod Kumar & Padhy, N.P. & Gupta, H.O., 2011. "Performance evaluation and improvement directions for an Indian electric utility," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(11), pages 7112-7120.
    7. Saha, Debalina & Bhattacharya, Rabindra N., 2019. "Analysis of the welfare implications of power-sector restructuring in West Bengal, India," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 62-71.
    8. Verma, Mandhir Kumar & Mukherjee, V. & Kumar Yadav, Vinod & Ghosh, Santosh, 2020. "Indian power distribution sector reforms: A critical review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    9. Patyal, Vishal Singh & Kumar, Ravi & Lamba, Kuldeep & Maheshwari, Sunil, 2023. "Performance evaluation of Indian electricity distribution companies: An integrated DEA-IRP-TOPSIS approach," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    10. Cao, Jing & Ho, Mun S. & Ma, Rong & Zhang, Yu, 2024. "Transition from plan to market: Imperfect regulations in the electricity sector of China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 509-533.
    11. Ullah, Kafait & Arentsen, Maarten J. & Lovett, Jon C., 2017. "Institutional determinants of power sector reform in Pakistan," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 332-339.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jain, Ritika & Nandan, Amit, 2020. "Electricity prices and firms' decisions and outcomes: The case of India after a decade of the Electricity Act," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    2. Kundu, Goutam Kumar & Mishra, Bidhu Bhusan, 2012. "Impact of reform and privatisation on employees a case study of power sector reform in Orissa, India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 252-262.
    3. Kundu, Goutam Kumar & Mishra, Bidhu Bhusan, 2011. "Impact of reform and privatization on consumers: A case study of power sector reform in Orissa, India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(6), pages 3537-3549, June.
    4. Bhatt, Brijesh & Singh, Anoop, 2021. "Power sector reforms and technology adoption in the Indian electricity distribution sector," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 215(PA).
    5. Verma, Mandhir Kumar & Mukherjee, V. & Kumar Yadav, Vinod & Ghosh, Santosh, 2020. "Indian power distribution sector reforms: A critical review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    6. Michaël Aklin & Patrick Bayer & S. Harish & Johannes Urpelainen, 2014. "Information and energy policy preferences: a survey experiment on public opinion about electricity pricing reform in rural India," Economics of Governance, Springer, vol. 15(4), pages 305-327, November.
    7. Jindal, Abhinav & Nilakantan, Rahul, 2021. "Falling efficiency levels of Indian coal-fired power plants: A slacks-based analysis," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C).
    8. Asantewaa, Adwoa & Jamasb, Tooraj & Llorca, Manuel, 2022. "Reforming Small Electricity Systems: Market Design and Competition," Working Papers 12-2022, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Economics.
    9. Singh, Anoop & Jamasb, Tooraj & Nepal, Rabindra & Toman, Michael, 2018. "Electricity cooperation in South Asia: Barriers to cross-border trade," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 741-748.
    10. Srivastava, Govind & Kathuria, Vinish, 2014. "Utility reforms in developing countries: Learning from the experiences of Delhi," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 29(C), pages 1-16.
    11. Shrivastava, Naveen & Sharma, Seema & Chauhan, Kavita, 2012. "Efficiency assessment and benchmarking of thermal power plants in India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 159-176.
    12. Tishler, A. & Newman, J. & Spekterman, I. & Woo, C.K., 2008. "Assessing the options for a competitive electricity market in Israel," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 21-29, March.
    13. Erdogdu, Erkan, 2013. "Essays on Electricity Market Reforms: A Cross-Country Applied Approach," MPRA Paper 47139, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Rammerstorfer, Margarethe & Wagner, Christian, 2009. "Reforming minute reserve policy in Germany: A step towards efficient markets?," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3513-3519, September.
    15. Hasan, Mudassar & Arif, Muhammad & Naeem, Muhammad Abubakr & Ngo, Quang-Thanh & Taghizadeh–Hesary, Farhad, 2021. "Time-frequency connectedness between Asian electricity sectors," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 208-224.
    16. Morgan Bazilian & Patrick Nussbaumer & Hans-Holger Rogner & Abeeku Brew-Hammond & Vivien Foster & Shonali Pachauri & Eric Williams & Mark Howells & Philippe Niyongabo & Lawrence Musaba & Brian Ó Galla, 2011. "Energy Access Scenarios to 2030 for the Power Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa," Working Papers 2011.68, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    17. Ram Sahi & Najib Khan, 2011. "Evolution of India’s Electricity Market Deregulation and Private Sector Investment in the Power Sector(withdrawn for review)," Carleton Economic Papers 11-08, Carleton University, Department of Economics.
    18. Adwoa Asantewaa & Tooraj Jamasb & Manuel Llorca, 2022. "Electricity Sector Reform Performance in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Parametric Distance Function Approach," Energies, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-29, March.
    19. Woo, Chi-Keung & Horowitz, Ira & Tishler, Asher, 2006. "A critical assessment of the Hong Kong Government's proposed post-2008 regulatory regime for local electricity utilities," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(13), pages 1451-1456, September.
    20. Ghosh, Ranjan & Kathuria, Vinish, 2014. "The transaction costs driving captive power generation: Evidence from India," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 179-188.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:38:y:2010:i:11:p:7121-7129. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.