THE government has made the right decision in agreeing to the demand from the provincial governments to share more data on the power sector, but far more room for greater transparency remains. The power sector is notoriously opaque, and few other areas of government operation are in more dire need of the light of day than this one. A more comprehensive template to regularly disclose key data such as units sent out in each distribution company, units billed, fuel stock position, daily flue gas emissions reports from each power plant should be disclosed publicly as per a regular cycle. In addition to this, financial data relating to recoveries and cash flows also needs to be disclosed regularly along the lines of what listed companies are required to do.

Transparency will help identify and curtail the play of rackets in the power sector, whether in fuel pilferage and adulteration or in billing and recoveries. It will also impose a certain operational discipline on the staff that would be made to focus on the numbers rather than the rackets. Moreover, it will give discerning eyes amongst the public a valuable glimpse into the operational and financial efficiency of the power sector, and help curb the overly centralised nature of decision-making within it. The latter is one of the core reasons why the sector has been unable to respond to strategic directives from the top because there is a strong disconnect between the base of the pyramid and the top tier of the decision-makers. This situation has created a symbiosis of sorts, where each tolerates the other without seeking to disrupt the status quo in any significant way. It is this symbiosis that has thwarted efforts at reform, and transparency along the lines of a regularly updated disclosure template can go a long way in disrupting it. The provincial governments are entitled to their share of data from the energy ministry, but so is the larger public.