R has a different view point

Mr Rao,

In the spirit of contesting everything which is not right, I would like to state that this year the entire state of Maharashtra is reeling under sever power shortage, and Mumbai, the seat of state govt, is also severely impacted. Gone are those days when Mumbai used to receive uninterrupted power supply.

It is easy for all of us to crib about a situation whereby 80% of the time we receive good power supply in Bangalore, w/o realizing that rest of the state is in much worse condition, simply because Bangalore happens to be the seat of state govt.

IMHO, it is not the question of BESCOM or private players (Delhi is a good case in point), rather it is the patronizing attitude of us or our elected representatives which is at fault. And, that's what we need to fix.

Thanks, R


My response

Dear R

The current problem in Mumbai is on account of interference by politicians, who are forcing Reliance and Tata's to pump part of their generation into the MSEB grid to supply neighbouring districts (not under the supply jurisdiction of Reliance or Tata's), lest they get beaten up by the people there who are envious of the much better quality of power that their neighbours in Mumbai enjoy.

The irony, on top of it all, is that the MSEB pays for it in its own sweet time, if at all.

Left to them, Reliance, TATA's, and the like will solve not only Mumbai's problem, but even those of the outlying districts. The business plans will be different, that's all. But, businees, it has to be! Not, plunder by a privileged few in the name of Socialism.

Besides, there already exist excellent models for sustainable rural power distribution in our own Karnataka itself, one of them being The Hukeri Co-op Society. They run it business-like, unlike the government agencies, and everyone including the many farmer members are better off for it all. Essentially, goverments have to get out of running businesses, and leave them to businessmen. And, businessmen have evolved, and today are far more sensitive to the various issues involved than you can ever hope the government Babu to be.

If Delhi had continued with DESU, the city would have been dead by now. In the face of all the sabotage activities by the unionists, Reliance and Tata's are steadily coming to grips with the situation, and in another few years' time, the city will enjoy far better quality power, on par with the others where the private suppliers have been in business from long.

For more, read http://karnataka-power-muddle.blogspot.com/

dark days

text of the letter sent to the Times of India:

I refer to the report captioned "City has 3.5 dark days a year" in your columns yesterday (June 18th).

As compared to 86 hrs listed against Bangalore by you, the genset records maintained by our housing society indicates an aggregate of 243 hrs (equivalent of over 10 days) during the calender year 2006. In the first 4 months of the current year, it has already recorded 142 hrs, with April alone accounting for 61 hrs. With the monsoons playing truant, in addition to the incapacity of BESCOM to manage the job, over which it however still wants to cling on to its monopoly status, things can only get darker as the days progress.

The figure of 50 hrs listed by you against Mumbai possibly reflects the period when power was deliberately shut down due to the floods the city experienced last year. Otherwise, Mumbaikars are generally well placed on this count, reflected in the fact that the city is not much of a market, compared to Bangalore, for gensets, inverters, converters, batteries, emergency lamps, candles, match-sticks, and what have you. Similar is the situation with Ahmedabad, Surat, Kolkata, Greater Noida, etc. The essential difference between these cities and Bangalore is that whereas we have the government-owned BESCOM supplying us power, they are all served by companies in the private sector.

Need one elaborate more?