Snippets from Todays The Hindu Business Line

I found the following two snippets from todays The Hindu Business Line interesting...

The Report of the Commission on Growth and Development :
Recently world bank released a report called the "The Report of the Commission on Growth and Development".

It takes into account the various views of developing countries that have scored sustained success. In the report they have a section on Avoiding Bad Ideas. They observe the following and I quote:
The report mentions that one of the important bad ideas is to subsidise energy except for limited subsidies targeted at highly vulnarable sections of people.
Another Bad idea is that of using price control to tame inflation...

unquote

Isnt it sad that India suffers from both these bad ideas...
Firstly
Oil is sold at a subsidy shielding people from knowing the true impact of oil price rise thereby making them irresponsible towards the sensitive issue
Secondly
Making the corporate sector to bend their back and control their price on cement, iron and steel to avoid inflation.
Inflation this time is a supply side inflation. Govt should be bothered about how to tame inflation by increasing/improving the supply !!!


Bright prospects of Solar Power in Europe :
Under the Municipality of Sanlucar la Mayor in Spain has a very large Solar farm. They have about 650 solar pannels each of 120 Square meters. These are both Mirrors and Photo voltaics. They trace the sun throughout the year and reflect the energy onto the solar receptors located on a 40 Storey tower.
Water passes through the pipes at the top and it gets heated enough to become steam which drives the trubines.. This plant is supposed to generate 300MW of energy for around 18,000 Homes (that should cover entire south bangalore !!!!)

The article goes on to menntion about germany being the largest installer of photo voltaic instruments. Subsequently the article went on to highlight the fact that europe is one of the most active proponents of solar energy and driving the growth of solar energy. The article also gave details about the ambitious future plans of Europian council to generate 35% of their energy needs through solar power.

I looked at the article and wondered what on earth are we doing to tap the precious solar power !!! With such a vast country having stretches of lands very well lit with solar power (infact the thar desert is a living example of opportunity wasted !!!), India should be the drivers of Solar energy...
Unfortunately we dont recognize this opportunity. If Japan or Germany had these stretch of barren land you would have seen hordes of solar pannels completly covering the desert.

But I am hopeful. Companies like Reliance, Moser Baer give me the confidence that we are making good progress towards utilizaing the solar power.