That's how the Darkness Enlightened us
The darkness descended twice, two successive days, as if to hammer some points in our heads. But, are there any takers?
While millions were jostling to ascertain that their toes get a foothold in overcrowded trucks, mini-trucks and buses all over Bengal, when about a dozen lost their lives while two vehicles loaded with commuters collided head on in a dark south-Bengal road, when hundreds of family members of some 200 miners stuck deep below 200 feet were breathlessly awaiting the arrival of electricity for hours so that lifts operate and their trapped relatives may get up, Calcutta was gleaming flaunting hundreds of costly soft snow white trident lights, as you might expect, over and above the normal dazzling sodium lamps. But miners cannot afford to fear deaths knowing that be it a grid-failure or not they may end up anytime; and just to prove that, on the other day, the steam-operated lift of another mine went kaput due to muddy-water dripping into the engine and 21 miners luckily could be rescued after their families spent more than 6 hours on tenterhooks. So, on the other side, there is always vulgar display of opulence...
As urban commoners were bewildered by the prolonged darkness and in some places humid heat, this darkness meant nothing to more than 0.40 billion or 400 million or 40 CRORE people of India, about a third of Indians, because for them electricity is not the major source of getting light at home after dusk. Uttar Pradesh hosts 13 crores or about a third of these non-electric-lighted people, state-wise the highest figure in this score, though that same Uttar Pradesh is the sixth largest electricity consumer state (more than 12 Giga Watt demand, the highest figure is of Maharashtra, above 24 Giga Watt). While the ex-Power Minister congratulates himself (getting promoted to Home Ministry) as being the best Power Minister ('we electrified 1.86 lakh villages' since 2005), the Times of India shamelessly declared, "So while 68 crore people were technically without power, more than half of them would scarcely have been able to tell the difference." How great technologically, capitalistically developed country India is! And our esteemed learned media-persons started barking against 'free' power distribution as one of the remedies in their prescription.
This is India, the emerging 'super power' for which chauvinists howl glory – the third largest electricity producing country in the world – blah blah, no joke – but this India is in the 154th rank among countries according to per capita electricity consumption! Don't be ashamed – the largest electricity producing country in the world, China, comes at about 90th rank in that list of countries according to per capita electricity consumption; and Brazil too does not make itself within first 60 countries – only Russia is at rank number 40 – that is how solid (or hollow) the BRICs countries are!
The bourgeois media started telling loudly about 'reforms' necessary, and in their list obviously there is more need for 'privatisation', they cited allowing private companies in coal production and distribution to 'increase efficiency' (as if less coal supply by Coal India was behind the failure, as if the recently exposed coal block allotment ghotala and the majority of unutilised mines still do not show what they seek); we can only laugh as we have seen how 'free market corrects itself' at least since 2008 banking crisis; but those same newspapers talked of 'regulators with teeth'! So, ladies and gentlemen, regulations are what you are speaking, centralised regulation over distribution system – how bad communistic terms you are using! But anyway, we know your (regulators') teeth will smile to moneyed customers and bite others (did your able regulator TRAI said anything regarding getting some billions of rupees that Vodafone owe the Indian Exchequer?); while our (communists') proposed regulation of production and distribution takes 'social necessity' as the prime consideration.
That Calcutta's CESC did a 'great' job of shining (and at times loaning out electricity) and the Bengal circle did a fine job in quick 'restarting' was due to a strange sounding word – isolation. Calcutta could save itself from grid failure by quickly isolating itself from the others. Bengal comparatively quickly (we heard) could re-charge its grid by making isolated-sub-systems and then starting them up and then connecting the already started-up sub-systems in a network. Thanks sirs, you are going to see some other examples, contrary to your expectations too, where some 'isolated' 'disturbances' in several industrial areas try to make some solid (to some extent) grounds here and there and then connect each other in real terms, to move towards showing real light out of this darkness.
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