POST-WAR ELECTRIC POWER DEVELOPMENT 229
to this because it is necessary you should know what has happened in the interval and also to show that the Government of India has been pursuing the matter in all earnestness and with all speed.
The Triple Programme
There is another important development in electrical policy to which I would like to draw the attention of all of you here. You will recall that at the last meeting of the Policy Committee, Mr. Collins, on behalf of the Bombay Government, made certain references to the contemplated introduction of the “Grid” system in the Bombay Presidency. During the last year, we in the Government of India have given a great deal of thought to the regional as distinguished from the local development of electricity in different parts of this country. We have felt more and more that if the services offered by electricity are to be brought to the door of producers as well as the consumers at the cheapest possible rates compatible with efficiency, we may have to follow albeit cautiously and gradually, the triple programme on which the Central Electricity Board in the U.K. have worked from the very beginning, viz. :—
(a) The creation of large-scale power stations located in the main industrial areas under the control of public supply undertakings ;
(b) the construction of main transmission system (with smaller secondary lines attached to it for tapping agricultural and other outlying areas) so that the entire region to be developed by the main system can be held in a power ring or a series of power rings radiating out from the large scale power stations ; and
(c) standardisation of frequency as far as possible within the region to be developed by the power system.
This triple programme constitutes the foundation of the “Grid” system, as we know it, to be operating in the U. K. since 1926 and it is my hope that if such a scheme of regional development is adopted in this country, we may before long bring the great boon of cheap electricity service to the door of everyone, high or low.
You may be interested to know that when the “Grid” system on a large scale was first contemplated in the U. K. it was estimated that by 1940-41 the national production of electricity would reach the