POST-WAR ELECTRIC POWER DEVELOPMENT 227
done by the Government of India in furtherance of the postwar planning for electrical development since the Committee last met on October 25, 1943, as most of you may have no knowledge about it. Soon after the last meeting of this Policy Committee, Mr. Mathews, the Electrical Commissioner with the Government of India, with the approval of Government, called together a Conference of leading power engineers in the country, both official and non-official, to consider postwar electric power development. The first thing the Conference did was to prepare a schedule of the heavy power equipment required by India for electric development immediately after the war. In addition to this the Conference passed certain resolutions all of which, to use the language of the report, “represented the unanimous conclusion of their studies, investigations and discussion.” These resolutions fell under four heads :—
(1) Under the first come recommendations which set out some general and specific suggestions to the Provinces and States to be observed by them in regard to electrical development within their jurisdiction.
(2) Under the second were grouped those which concerned the appointment of the Technical Power Board.
(3) Under third come those related to certain prospective power developments considered by the Conference to the prima facie worth investigation without dalay.
(4) Under the fourth head were placed those which relate to railway electrification, manufacture of synthetic fertilisers and rural electrification.
As the members of the Conference said in the letter accomanying their findings, “this is the first occasion on which the power development programme has been reviewed as a coordinated whole and that the presence of engineers whose experience covers in the aggregate the varied conditions of the whole of India, has introduced an extremely valuable element in co-ordinating regional needs.”
Heavy Power Equipment
I am sure you will agree that we owe the Conference a great debt for unfolding to us the prospective electric power development for the