Power-less


The dramatic, sensational version of the coverage of the blackout that hit India a few days back said that over 680 million were affected by the blackout! Wow! That’s like 1 in 10 people on the planet. Newspapers splashed photos of stranded commuters of the Delhi Metro, there were reports of electric trains stopping in tunnels…you get the idea. The 680 million number sounded believable.

Until I read this very informative analysis in the Wall Street Journal of how many were really impacted by the blackout. WSJ started off with the fact that only two-thirds of households in India have electricity to begin with. In northern parts of India, that fraction is, as expected, lesser than the national average. Like Bihar. Whatever Nitish Kumar may have done, only 16.4% of households in that state have electricity. Continuing in this manner through all the impacted states, the calculations showed that the number of people impacted came to 323 million. A huge number, no doubt, but less than half the population of the areas affected.

Yet another example of why applying Western country assumptions (e.g. a blackout affects every person in the area) doesn’t hold in India.

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