India Power Outages: Living Through the Blackout

The power is back on in India, at least for now. That’s after hundreds of millions of people across the country suffered through two days of what’s been called one of the world’s worst blackouts.

India’s new power minister Veerappa Moily insists that the outage will “not be repeated”. But Indians are used to spotty power supplies. So they’re not so sure.

The BBC’s Tinku Ray, in New Delhi, says that even though Indians are accustomed to power cuts and rolling blackouts, the breakdown of four of the nation’s power grids caused widespread misery. She saw it firsthand in India’s capital city.

“Everything was out,” she says. “Not just in the homes. On the streets, there were no traffic lights. Delhi’s subway, the Metro, was completely halted. People had to be evacuated off the trains. The city was grid locked. There were thousands of people out on the streets.”

She says the government is still not sure of the cause. And that a panel is investigating the outages.

But she notes, “The government today was saying, ‘Compare us to the United States back in 2003. It took days for the US to get its grid back up when we saw that massive blackout on the eastern seaboard, and, hey, it took us less than 24 hours to get our power back up.’”

Ray says many people and businesses had backup power. And a great many Indians did not experience the blackout personally, as they are not yet on the power grid. But she thinks “it’s the sheer magnitude of the failure of this blackout that is more shocking and surprising, and that’s what really angered Indians the most.”

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Aaron Schachter: In India, the power is back on, at least for now. That’s after hundreds of millions of people across the country suffered through two days of what’s been called one of the world’s worst blackouts. India’s new power minister Veerappa Moily insists that the outage will not be repeated. But Indians are used to spotty power, so they’re not so sure. The BBC’s Tinku Ray is in the capital New Delhi. Tinku, to start out, you’ve been living through the blackouts. What’s it been like?

Tinku Ray: It’s been pretty miserable, actually, Aaron. I mean, even though we’re no strangers to power cuts. We have controlled rolling power cuts here at certain times of the day for certain periods, but this was something different. You had full power grids just breaking down, so that meant everything was out. Not just in the homes but on the streets. There were no traffic lights. Delhi’s Metro, the underground, the subway here was completely halted. People had to be evacuated off the trains. The city was grid-locked – Delhi was grid-locked. There were thousands of people out on the streets. Yesterday alone, it happened in the middle of the day so you can just imagine what that would mean.

Schachter: Did business just grind to a halt for two days?

Ray: For some people, it did. Yes. Like I said, we are no stranger to power cuts and, therefore, people who can afford it, big businesses, people who own the building that we broadcast from all have power generators as backup. That is the norm for people who can afford it here, but for small businesses, they can’t afford that. For them, they are reliant on the government and so that’s who was really affected, and also farmers in the rural areas of much of these northern and eastern parts of India. They were the ones that were really hit hard.

Schachter: Many people are blaming the farmers, in part, for causing the blackouts because there is no rain, they needed electric pumps to get water to their crops. But there are lots of other theories for what’s caused the problem. What are you hearing?

Ray: I think the farmers can’t really be blamed. I know that’s what many people are saying. The government will not say. We still don’t know why this happened. It’s a huge embarrassment for the government here. There have been some reports that greedy states were actually drawing more power than they were supposed to. But some scientists and technical people who actually know about power and grid systems say, “Actually, you know what, this could have been human error. This could have been somebody not noticing that there was a surge or some other technical fault and that’s what could have just tripped the whole system.” I think we won’t know for quite a while but there is an investigation underway and a three-member team is now looking into the problem.

Schachter: Now the Indian historian Ramachandra Guha was quoted in The New York Times today as saying, “India needs to stop strutting on the world’s stage like it’s a great power and focus on its deep problems within.” I wonder if that’s a widely held feeling.

Ray: I think a lot of people are saying exactly that. Even though, the government today was saying, “Compare us to the United States back in 2003. It took days for the U.S. to get its grid back up when we saw that massive blackout on the eastern seaboard, and, hey, it took us less than 24 hours to get our power back up.”

Schachter: Is there a feeling there that the news of this event, massive though it seems, is being overblown?

Ray: There is a lot of talk about it being hyped up because of the sheer number of people that might have been affected but, as we should actually clarify, huge swathes of India never have power – were no stranger to power cuts. But I think it was the sheer magnitude of the failure of this blackout that is more shocking and surprising, and that’s what really angered Indians the most.

Schachter: The BBC’s Tinku Ray in New Delhi; thank you.

Ray: You’re welcome Aaron.

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