Boostrapping India : ELE.01 - RLPP/Jury in Electricity Regulators
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Proposed administrative procedure
ELE.01   -   RLPP/Juty   over   Electricity   Regulators

Purpose
: To reduce nexusproness in regulation/supervision over electricity companies

Pre-requiste readings : RLPP

    Contents
  1. The problem with Regulatordom
  2. Solution? ELE.01 - RLPP/Jury over Electricity regulation
  3. Advantages of ELE.01
  4. Draft of the act to create procedure ELE.01


The problem with Regulatordom

The word "regulator" is creating unnecessary hype -- a regulator is nothing but a regular officer(babu) or a judge, or a cross. Instead of a seperate word "regulator" the word "judge" would have had been more appropriate, becuase most regulators suffer from the problems judges do -- their nexuses with lawyers and company-owners.

So called "regulatory capture" is nothing but a euphenism for regulator-lawyer nexus or regulator-oligopolists nexus. This euphenism is just a term used to cover this dirty nexuses.

Why are nexuses in regulators so rampant? First, the regulators are appointed by PM or Minister of concerned departments. The PM/Minister have dense nexuses with wealhy oligopoly owners. These owners actovely lobby to ensure that a puppet dear to them becomes the regulator. The PM/Ministers would also like that a officer/judge dear to the becomes regulator. So all in all, only an individual with dense nexuses with Ministers/oligopoly-owners becomes a regulator. So its not just that nexuses get formed after a person becomes regulator, the person is pre-nexused. And after he becomes regulator, he comes into every day contact with same small number of lawyers who plead for oligopoly companies, and same oligopoly owners. So the nexuses further become more and more denser. And worst part is that, as of today, citizens of India have no way to recall/expel a regulator. No wonder, regulators retard competition, at the cost of customers.



Solution ? ELE.01 - RLPP/Jury over Electricity Regulation

Following are the procedures I propose
  1. At National level, the PM will appoint an Electricity Minister, who will appoint a Central Electricity Regulator in-charge of regulating electricity power companies (as today)

  2. The Central Electricity Minister will appoint one Registrar per district, or hand over the responsibility of Registrar to an existing officer.

  3. RLPP over Central Electricity Regulator : Any citizen can walk to Registrar's office and approve at most 5 candidates for the position of Central Electricity Regulator. If any candidate has approval of over 25% of ALL citizens, and his approvals are 1% higher than existing Regulator, the Minister will expel the existing Central Regulator and appoint the highest approved candidate as new Central Electricity Regulator.
    (for details, pls see RLPP over officer.)

  4. At state level, the CM will appoint an Electricity Minister, who will appoint a State Electricity Regulator in-charge of regulating electricity power companies (as today)

  5. The State Electricity Minister will appoint one Registrar per district, or hand over the responsibility of Registrar to an existing officer.

  6. RLPP over State Electricity Regulator : Any citizen can walk to Registrar's office and approve at most 5 candidates for the position of State Electricity Regulator. If any candidate has approval of over 25% of ALL citizens, and his approvals are 1% higher than existing Regulator, the State Electricity Minister will expel the existing State and appoint the highest approved candidate as new State Electricity Regulator.
    (for details, pls see RLPP over officer.)

  7. The State Electricity Regulator will appoint District Electricity Regulators.

  8. RLPP over District Electricity Regulator : Any citizen can walk to Registrar's office and approve at most 5 candidates for the position of District Electricity Regulator. If any candidate has approval of over 25% of ALL citizens, and his approvals are 1% higher than existing Regulator, the State Electricity Minister will expel the existing District Regulator and appoint the highest approved candidate as new District Electricity Regulator.
    (for details, pls see RLPP over officer.)

  9. Jury System over District Electricity Regulation : The District Electricity Regulator will use an existing Grand Jury, or will make another Grand Jury of 30 Jurors. If any citizen has complaint against a staff member of District Electricity Regulator, or any electricity company in that district, he can approach the Grand Jury. If over 15 Grand Jurors see prima facie truth, the Regulator will summon a Jury of 12 randomly chosen citizens from that District.

  10. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors decide a fine on the electricity company, and if the company does not pay that fine within 30 days, the District Regulator will suspend that company within 7 days. If over 8 out of 12 Jurors decide that the said employee of District Electricity Company is NOT fit to serve citizens, the Regulator will expel him within 24 hours.

  11. Appeal against judgement of District Jury : Any party can appeal against the judgement of the District Jury before the National Regulator. The Regulator will pick 3 districts at random, and forward the Appeal to those 3 Grand Juries. If over 2 Juries' over 8 out of 12 Jurors vote against the first judgement, the judgement will stand cancelled. Otherwise, it will be considered upheld.

  12. The Regulators in addition will make rules to regulate the electricity sector. If a electricity company violates the rule, the Juries will decide the punishment.



Advantages of ELE.01

ELE.01 will make electricity regulation less nexusprone, and thus fairer. So electricity generation, distribution and transmission will become more competitive and thus less expensive for users.



Draft of the act to create procedure ELE.01

I have drafted the text for "RLPP/Jury over Electricity Regulation", which if passed by Parliament of India will enable citizens to regulate electricity companies in a nexusless way. To see the draft, please click here.

     Now citizens can ask MPs to pass this Act. But IMO, it will be wiser for citizens to first enact procedure LM.03, and then use LM.03 to pass this ELE.01 draft WITHOUT any help from MPs. To know about procedure LM.03, please click here.



If you have any other question, please mail it to MehtaRahulC@yahoo.com. Thousand thanks in advance.





Next - ELE.02 : RLPP over Electricity Distribution Company