Power troubles

Every year, we totter on the brink of power crisis in this country. We start looking to the heavens to open up and fill our reservoirs to ensure a good power and water supply to its citizens. The rain Gods have not been relenting this far and look at the crisis we have gotten ourselves into. In Karnataka, the situation at the hydel power reservoirs is very bleak and if there is still no rainfall in the coming 2 weeks, even God will not be able to help in the crisis arising. There have been unscheduled power cuts since the last few days but today the Karnataka Power Corporation formally announced that people have to brace for a lot of power cuts, 2-4 hours in B’lore and more than 6 hours in the rural areas. They are trying to buy power from all quarters but that is a pretty difficult and expensive task considering power shortages all over the country. Besides, they depleted the hydel power sources during summer due to electoral concerns. Look where they have brought us.

Look at the situation in Northern India, Delhi has been reeling under huge powercuts since many days. If that is the situation in the national capital, then one can only shudder to imagine the situation in other places. What is frustrating is that no long term power solution seems to be in sight. I don’t know where the allocated resources to set up new power plants go? Maybe in making statues for people like Mayawati. We have bankrupt politicians with bankrupt policies. There is hardly anything done to check power thefts, upgrade grids to minimize power losses during transmission, explore nuclear power options, educate people to reduce power consumption and have some long term strategies to deal with the problem. We cannot expect our cities and industries to grow and not have increasing power needs.

There must be a legislation to have some accountability towards utilization of public monies. We should be allowed to take our civic bodies, our corporators, legislators, ministers to task and to court if they misuse our funds and fill their own coffers. Corruption in the bureaucracy and government bodies has already reached shameful proportions. According to a report, Indian bureaucracy is ranked the worst in Asia. No surprises for anyone who has dealt with the Indian babus. So while our money goes into the middlemen’s and ministers’ pockets, we continue to suffer water and power shortages.

According to DNA, The Rashtrapati Bhavan, PM’s official residence and Parliament have run power bills of Rs.14 crores in the last year. So much for conservation ! Are we doomed to looking at the heavens each year, forever?