THE electricity meter panel in the brick-walled house with rough cement plaster continued to beep. The owner of the house, Ma'mun, 49 years old, recognized the sound as a sign that his electricity credit was almost ran out. The resident of Cibogel, Ciomas subdistrict, Bogor Regency, West Java, quickly asked his wife to buy power tokens at a nearby grocery store.

Ma’mun’s wife purchased a 14-kilowatt-hour electricity token for Rp2