The unprecedented
breakdown in the Northern Grid between 30 and 31 July resulted in 600
million people across the north and east of India losing their electricity
supply.
No lights, no fans, no air conditioning. Hospitals, trains, businesses,
and schools shut down. Life as many knew it was dislocated.
Those who had them used diesel-powered generator sets. Most
people simply sat it out; after all power cuts happen every day in most cities;
we had regular load-shedding as far back as the mid 70’s; in any case vast
numbers of poor people in thousands of villages are not connected to the
grid anyway. That this particular power outage affected half the country’s
population at the same time was merely a matter of detail.
Or was it?
India’s image was tarnished worldwide. One of the BRIC
economies, a nuclear power, a space exploring and satellite launching nation,
India aspired to a seat on the Security Council and Great Power status. And we
still can’t meet basic needs for electrical energy; forget about the level of
per capita energy consumption of China, never mind Europe or America; a third
of the population don’t have access to electricity even for a light bulb or a socket to charge your mobile
phone reliably.
The blackout itself was not the real surprise. What I found astonishing
and disquieting was the response of Mr Shinde, the Union Minister for Power. On
NDTV his replies to fair and balanced questioning by Barkha Dutt was
breathtaking for its arrogance and disturbing for anyone hoping that this would
be the beginning of the end of India’s power woes.
No, he did not see
anything odd or surprising in his elevation to the Home Ministry. It was all
planned weeks ago as part of a cabinet reshuffle because of Mr Pranab Mukherjee‘s
election as President of India.
No, he said, it was not the fault of the Government. It was
because all these states, you see, they were drawing more energy than their
allocated quota. Why? Because, stupid, of the drought and the summer heat. That’s
what caused the the grid to collapse, and then the blackout. Simple, don’t you
see?, it’s all the fault of the weather.
And by the way these things happen in America too, he
continued. Remember the New York blackout? It took them 2 days to get power
back on; we did it in under 6 hours! So there, we can do power supply better
than the Americans, no need to beat ourselves up over a minor inconvenience of
a few hours of loss of supply.
There wasn’t one word of acknowledgement that the Government
was accountable for its part in the complex mix of underlying factors that are
responsible for India’s chronic under-investment in power generation and poor
management of distribution. There wasn’t
a whiff of an apology for the mess that is energy policy over which his
Government had presided for the last so many years. There was not the least
semblance of understanding of the changes that needed to be made if things are
to get better. Changes that would
involve tough policy choices: from higher prices for those who can afford to
pay to greater incentives for new producers to make the long term investments
in power generation.
The Grid can be patched up and we can all limp along with a
few more hours of load-shedding. But if India is to catch up with the rest of
the world it needs to think seriously about fundamental changes to how we
approach the most important parts of our infrastructure. Keeping the lights on has to be a national
priority.
And yet this may be the cataclysmic event we needed to shake
things up. Things usually have to get pretty bad before everyone agrees that
something dramatic has to be done to make things better.
Take for example, the experience of London. Today it is
glittering in the glow of a successful Olympic games But in the summer of 1858 a
great stink arose from the River in London – a stench so strong that London
came to a standstill, Parliament shut down, and the Courts planned to move out
of the City.
London, famed as the centre of global commerce, came to be
seen as the world’s most filthy city.
But The Great Stench also led to reform. It provided the impetus
to spend 10% of the country’s then GDP to build a massive modern underground sewerage
system that started the great Victorian Sanitary revolution.
The question for India now is this: Will the Great Power
Outage of July 2012 be the impetus for a national energy plan that ensures a
secure energy supply for every Indian?
