“As electric power was restored across northern India on Wednesday, political jockeying over who was to blame for the widespread blackouts intensified,†Gardiner Harris and Vikas Bajaj wrote in The New York Times.
Former and current power ministers, the opposition party, state power officials and others joined in the finger-pointing, they wrote. Whoever is at fault, there's no escaping India's basic power problem: the country's rapid development has led demand to far outstrip supply.
Changes may be afoot, though.
Some experts are more hopeful than in the past because a number of Indian officials have made politically difficult decisions in recent months to raise electricity prices. State governments in Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Rajasthan and Punjab have moved to stem losses at public utilities that had been selling power for far less than it costs them to bu y it. Besides providing more money to invest in additional supply, the higher prices for consumers and businesses should also help lower demand for power.
“I think everybody has realized that there are no free lunches,†said Chandan Roy, a former director at India's largest state-owned power producer, the National Thermal Power Corporation.
Frequent blackouts have forced many businesses, including India's vaunted software industry, to rely extensively on diesel generators, which typically cost two to three times as much to produce power as does electricity from the grid. Comparisons are difficult, though, since the government partly subsidizes both methods of generating electricity.
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