World's top electricity producers, India the 5th

India faces a power crisis of such magnitude that it can be termed as one of the biggest threats to the nation's economic growth and progress. Today, decades after Independence hundreds of Indian villages still do not have electricity, especially in the rural areas.

Among the cities, with the sole exception of Mumbai, almost all Indian cities suffer daily power cuts, affecting industry, business, education and life in general.
And this, despite the fact that India has the fifth largest electricity-generation capacity in the world. It has an installed capacity of over 152 gigawatts (1 gigawatt is equal to 1 billion watts).

In 2008 (which are the latest figures available), India produced 787,546,450,000 kWh of electricity, which is about 4 per cent of the total power generation in the world. Only four other countries produce more electricity than India.

India is also the world's fifth largest consumer of electricity. In 2007, India consumed 568,000,000 megawatt hours of electricity, which works out to an average of about 51 watts per person.
Comparatively, the per capita electricity consumption in the United States is 1,460 watts, and in China it is 700 watts.

India has amongst the lower per capita power consumption rates in the world. Only Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Congo, Bangladesh, Kenya, Pakistan, Myanmar, Sudan, Cameroon, Nepal, and some other sub-Saharan countries have lower power consumption than India.