The man behind an electrifying challenge

Piyush Goyal was among Mumbai's most successful chartered accountants and merchant bankers when he gave up a flourishing professional career to become India's power minister in May 2014. Actually he was appointed more than just power minister. As a 50-year-old who had never held ministerial office before, he was put in charge of an entire energy feedstock chain, with the Departments of Mines, Coal and Power under him, and with New and Renewable Energy as well. In previous times, these would have been run by four separate ministers. In three years Goyal has emerged as among the best-regarded ministers in the Narendra Modi government. A country where power plants were starved of coal and which was importing coal in 2013-14 is now exporting coal. Power availability has improved dramatically and at current levels of demand India is a power surplus economy. Of course, as industrial demand picks up some of those numbers could change, but Goyal is preparing for a potential demand surge in the coming years What have been Goyal's principal achievements He has galvanised coal mining and rationalised supply of coal from proximate mines to public and private generation plants. A change in rules has allowed different plants to swap contracted coal sources and choose mines that are closer and therefore cheaper. Goyal has pushed a very impressive renewables and particularly solar programme that has targeted 100 GW of solar energy generation and 75 GW of wind energy generation by 2022. The UPA government (2009-14) had set a solar energy target of 20 GW by 2022. This ambition and derring-do is also driving Goyal's belief that the government can electrify every Indian village well before 2019. In August 2015, Prime Minister Modi had promised that the 18,452 Indian villages that had remained without electricity even seven decades after Independence would be given access to power within “1,000 days” - by May 2018. Only about 4,000 villages now remain. A popular figure in Mumbai with his wife Seema - the couple have two children, a son and a daughter - Goyal has acquired a totally different persona in public service. He works manically, bureaucrats say, and late into the night, avoiding the social limelight altogether. In the May 2014 election, he had contributed substantially to the BJP's communication and outreach strategy and is expected to repeat that in 2019, emerging as both a capable minister and a party essential. This makes Goyal a special talent for the BJP and he certainly has a bright ministerial and policy-making future in the years ahead.