Front Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- About the Authors -- Executive Summary -- Abbreviations -- Chapter 1 Introduction -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 2 Institutional Context -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 3 Corporate Governance of State Power Utilities -- Objectives of Unbundling and Corporatizing State Utilities -- Corporate Governance Requirements for State Utilities in India -- Findings-Corporate Governance in Practice -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 4 Regulatory Governance -- Mandates of SERCs -- Implementation of Regulatory Mandates -- Institutional Design: SERC Autonomy, Capacity, Transparency, and Accountability -- Indexes on Institutional Design and Implementation of Mandates -- Notes -- References -- Chapter 5 Relationships between Governance and Utility Performance -- Corporate Governance -- Governance and Performance -- Notes -- Chapter 6 Conclusions -- Corporate Governance -- Regulatory Governance -- Recommendations -- Notes -- References -- Appendix A Corporate Governance Requirements in India -- Notes -- Reference -- Appendix B Coverage of Electricity Utilities -- Appendix C Utility Performance on Corporate Governance Indexes -- Appendix D Corporate Governance Data -- Appendix E Coverage of State Electricity Regulatory Commissions -- Appendix F SERC Performance on Regulatory Governance Indexes -- Appendix G Regulatory Governance Data -- Boxes -- Figures -- Tables -- Back Cover.

This World Bank review, Governance of Indian State Power Utilities: An Ongoing Journey, is a first attempt to systematically examine the quality of corporate and regulatory governance in the Indian power sector. Considering that much of the poor performance of utilities reflected internal and external shortfalls in governance, India's Electricity Act of 2003 mandated unbundling and corporatizing the vertically integrated state electricity boards, along with establishing independent regulators at the center and in the states. The aim was to create a more accountable and commercial performance culture. A particular motivation was the need to keep the state government at arm's length from utilities and regulators alike. This review assesses aspects of corporate governance that would be expected to increase the internal and external accountability of utilities; the institutional design of state-level regulation; and the extent to which regulators have implemented key elements of their mandate. In addition, it examines the correlation between the adoption of recommended corporate governance practices and utility performance, and between regulatory governance and utility performance. It finds that while unbundling the electricity boards has progressed quite well on paper, actual separation and functional independence of the unbundled entities is considerably less than it appears-and clearly identifying the contributions of individual entities in the service value chain and holding them accountable for their performance remains difficult. Corporatization has been unable to insulate utilities from state interference because boards remain state dominated, lack sufficient decision-making authority, and are rarely evaluated on performance. Also, the regulatory environment has not sufficiently pushed utilities to improve performance. State electricity

regulatory commissions have been established in all states, but a lack of accountability and autonomy and limited technical capacity have restricted their ability to create an independent, transparent, and unbiased governance framework for the sector that balances consumer and investor/utility interests.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2018. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.