Poverty in the Midst of Abundance: Repressive Populism, Bureaucratization, and Supply-side Bias in Madhya Pradesh’s Power Sector

Summary

Electricity reforms in Madhya Pradesh remain underreported, despite some atypical outcomes. This chapter in ‘Mapping Power: The Political Economy of Electricity in India’s States’ examines the political economy of transitions in MP’s power sector, with the objective of identifying drivers of policy choices and their outcomes. Drawing on the findings, it explains how intensive institutional restructuring has resulted in bureaucratization and consolidated state control over the sector, and discusses the resulting outcomes. It also analyses the implications of past experiences for ongoing and future reforms.