Sir — This refers to the editorial, “Electrifying India” (May 1). Electricity improves the quality of life, work and just about everything else. It also powers the information superhighway which allows even remote villages to be mainstreamed; it is what economists call a force multiplier.

A village is officially classified as electrified if at least 10 per cent of its dwellings have an electric connection. This means that even with a ‘fully electrified’ countryside, millions of villagers could go without power. The fact that all of India’s nearly 600,000 villages are electrified, is an achievement worth celebrating.

However, celebrating over just a piece of statistic like the last inhabited village of India getting electrified is celebrating a bit too early, not unlike the BJP’s misfired 2004 general election slogan of ‘India Shining’ and not unlike a cricketer celebrating a batsman getting clean bowled on a no ball.

After all, don’t Indian citizens find it a bit weird that all inhabited villages in the country have been electrified when a simpler and more basic need of potable drinking water in every village is still a far cry?

Political gimmick