India's Looming Power Crisis and the Way Forward: An Ode to Sustainability

The quantum jumps in the size of energy demand and acute power shortage in India means that it is high time to tap the non-conventional sources like wind, solar, biomass energy, etc. In this backdrop, the objective of the paper is to construct a Power Generation Deprivation Index (PGDI) to bring to the surface the issue of the looming power crisis. Given the inter-state variability among the focus variables considered coupled with the multicollinearity issue, made the author to use Principal Component Analysis (PCA). Also, a theoretical framework has been designed to show how the power usage over time can be derived but the empirical estimation of this framework is not a part of this article and has been left for further research. The findings validate the existence of a looming power crisis in India and finally the policy implications based on sustainable management of non-conventional sources of power have been discussed.