A Swelling Mountain of Bills Plagues India’s Power Industry A growing pile of unpaid bills in India’s power sector is risking the country’s development, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, urging states to clear up their arrears to help modernize power systems. The South Asian nation’s power retailers, mostly controlled by provincial administrations, are burdened by heavy losses and together have nearly 1.4 trillion rupees ($17.7 billion) in unpaid bills as well as subsidies from their governments for providing cheaper power to some consumers, Modi said at a virtual event Saturday. As a result the utilities have racked up more than 1 trillion rupees in overdue payments to generators, leaving the distributors with inadequate resources to overhaul their networks. The financially squeezed distributors are often seen as the weakest link in the country’s electricity industry, causing distress that trickles through the chain, from power producers, to coal su...