Ban the bulb

A number of countries have banned the incandescent bulb. Ireland was amongst the first few in 2008, Australia 2010, EU agreed to a progressive phase-out by 2012. Even the US, the US!, closed their last incandescent bulb factory in 2010. The wiki article on phase out of incandescent bulbs mentions China has commenced a stage wise plan, bulbs bigger than 100 W already phased out, 60 W units by October 2014 and all of them to be banned by October 2016.

About India, the article is less enthusiastic. "There was a plan to replace 400 million incandescent bulbs with CFLs by 2012... The states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka in India have banned the use of incandescent bulbs in government departments, public sector undertakings, various boards, cooperative institutions, local bodies, and institutions running on government aid."

I have been doing some quick research and some quick math. According to the 2011 census, there are 172 million rural households and 84 million urban households, say 256 million all told. Presuming a very modest 2 bulbs per urban household and 1 per rural home, we are looking at a minimum of 340 million bulbs, though the lamp manufacturing industry estimates that there are about 700 million bulbs in the country. Switching from a 60W incandescent bulb to a 6W LED unit, which will provide equivalent light, could potentially result in an annual savings of  54W x 14 hours x 365 days = 78000 Watt hours. 78000 Watt hours x 340 million bulbs = 26 Tera Watt hours or 26000 MU
With 700 million bulbs the savings would be about 52000 MU

The power shortage in India, as stated on the wiki page for Electricity Sector in India is 1048672-995157=53515 MU.

Anywhere between half and almost all of India's power shortage problem could be solved by enforcing a move from incandescent bulbs to LED lamps.

PM Modi signaled this need when he replaced one bulb in his Delhi office with an LED unit. India's lighting industry has plans for a self-imposed ban on 100 W bulbs starting this year with 60W going out in 2016 and 40W by 2017 according to this article in the Economic Times.

But with the price of LED lamps dropping to the 100 Rupee range, the time for the government to take specific action to ban the bulb might just be now.