Army of women is battling India’s $10 billion power problem

India’s power companies have a problem largely responsible for $10 billion a year in losses. Slum dwellers steal electricity and refuse to pay their bills. But company officials often can’t go in without being chased by mobs—and sometimes beaten, tied up, urinated on, even murdered.
So officials at Tata Power Co.’s joint venture with the Delhi state government came up with a solution that’s turning out to be a model, not just for the rest of India, but for the world: It hired women living in the 223 slums it serves in the northern and northwest parts of the capital and  persuading, coaxing, cajoling and nagging them to pay their power bills.

The result is a 183 percent increase in revenue over five years from the slums where Tata operates the project, with minimal cost to the company. Active power connections have risen 40 percent to 196,000—meaning that 56,000 previously freeloading homes have become active, bill-paying power customers.
“This gave us a way to get into these neighborhoods, rife with mafia and political influences,” said chief executive officer and managing director at Tata Power-DDL, which had started out operating literacy campaigns for slum women in 2010 as a way into the communities. “We thought educated women would give us a much better buy-in.
The success of Tata Power-DDL’s initiative is inspiring imitation. Rival BSES Delhi, co-owned by the Delhi state government and Anil Ambani-controlled Reliance Infrastructure Ltd. engaged 40 women earlier this year in a pilot project in a west Delhi slum. Having resident women distribute bills and collect payment from neighbors produced “very encouraging results” that will now be used to expand the program, according to BSES spokesman
The World Bank is trying out similar initiatives in Jamaica and Kenya, and is considering adapting it to other African countries. So far, Kenya Power & Lighting Co. has improved connection rates by doing more community engagement based on the Tata model that “has provided a lot of learning, which we are incorporating,”, a Ghana-based World Bank consultant, said via email.
[Courtesy[economictimes.]

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