Comments by "M Shastri" (@libshastra) on "Fight over the new law u0026 India has excess power, people starved u0026 sellers bankrupt" video.

It doesn't matter if you are market oriented or not, it is unacceptable for Govts avoid paying DISCOMMs their dues and use their future revenues as collateral to pay for previous year's bills (or force a write off). That is just bad fiscal management, left or right, it should be treated as bad governance. Also, if you read history, the only reason why the East India Company was able to rapidly conquer India was because Indian Kings never paid their dues (often over generations) to the merchants. The Merchant to whom the Royals owed money to, simply allied with someone who understood the basics of upholding contracts (i.e. The British).
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Upto the mid 2000s, State DISCOMs used to harass paying customers. MSEB (the predecessor to MAHADISCOM), would retroactively hike rates, then send you a bill with the retroactive rate and then proceed to disconnect electricity. Those DISCOM babu relied on the fact that paying customers would not maintain 20 years (I kid you not) of electricity bills, payments receipts to dispute with them. Some of this billing harassment shit still happens today however, they can't retroactively hike rates and make you pay for them. I kid you not, I would run around with my mom or dad with stacks of bills and payment receipts disputing this nonsense, jumping through all the hoops. It was miserable.
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@rutvikrs The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple is a starting point. I have also been reading British archive on Project Gutenberg.
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@tapemaj we fought it and decline to pay the retroactive rate hike (just like Vodafone, Cairn, etc.).
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@ThePrintIndia it was only South Mumbai + outlying areas though. The rest of the City had to deal with MSEB now MahaDISCOM.
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@secretscipio you don't need to imagine, just read some of the other comments. They will tell you how terrible things were.
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@GauravDhandhukia from reading books and listening to talk conducted in other colleges
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You are describing the pre 2004 era. You go to SBI to fight a babu to withdraw cash, then go to a BSNL booth to call someone and often scream on the phone so that they hear it and then walk miles to a Govt bus stop to take a back breaking bus ride over non existent roads. Welcome to our childhood.
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Basically the critics of this bill are acting like former CAG Vinod Rai crying for special treatment for PSU DISCOMs. Poda, go get a life.
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@ashwinsingh199 up until mid 90s (IIRC) BSES was limited to Bandra. After that it came under BSES. MahaVitran was reorganized in 2005. So in some sense I can tell you are younger than I am.
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