IT WAS the largest power blackout in human history. By the time the lights – or, crucially, the air conditioning in the sweltering 45-degree heat – were back, some 670 million, 10 per cent of the world’s population, had been deprived of electricity. Three of India’s overburdened, linked northern power grids collapsed for several hours, first last Monday, then Tuesday, extending blackouts almost 2,000 miles, from India’s eastern border with Burma to its western border with Pakistan.
The restoration of supplies will, however, come as little comfort to consumers – there can be little confidence that the circumstances which triggered the blackouts will not be repeated with the same result. A combination of a weaker than usual monsoon, curtailing hydrogeneration; soaring temperatures; coal shortages; and an already overstretched, deeply inefficient generation system all proved all too much. India suffers a power deficit of 8 to 12 per cent in peak periods, a serious impediment to its now slowing economic growth, and power cuts of eight hours a day are common in many parts of the country. To compound matters, losses in electricity transmission and distribution are among the world’s highest, 24 to 40 per cent, because of inefficiencies and theft, while 300 million people, a quarter of the population, have still no access to electricity at all.
The challenge is also symptomatic of India’s dysfunctional political system and the grip of patronage and localism on it. Chronic underinvestment in power generation, in sharp contrast to neighbouring China, is in part a function of populist, uneconomic pricing policies which mean most Indian consumers receive heavily subsidised electricity, while farmers get free power, supposedly to pump groundwater to irrigate their land. But much of it is illegally diverted to factories. With local politicians, in particular, unwilling to do anything about the situation, this has left the grid overburdened and electricity-distribution companies heavily in debt.
The blackouts were also exacerbated by the refusal of local politicians to sanction switch-offs of overconsuming local customers as their states exceeded their quotas from the overburdened national grid. The result, the triggering of a domino-like series of shutdowns that brought down most of the system. In recent years, India’s government has set ambitious goals for expanding capacity. New plants have opened, but many more have faced delays, whether because of bureaucratic entanglements, environmental concerns or other problems. Light is back. But for how long?