Nerve Endings Firing Away

Half a million lose power a day in the U.S., says CNet. If you have lived in India, that number will seem ridiculously low. After all, there exists hardly an Indian who has not experienced a power outrage in their lives and often for a prolonged time. I haven’t been to India in a while but the last time, I was there, and we almost routinely lost power for at least one day every week (insert load shedding excuses here). In the monsoon season, this phenomenon almost quadrupled and we lost power as soon as the first drop of rain hit the parched earth. And we lived near India’s commercial capital; I cannot imagine the plight of those moffusil towns.

The power outrages are one step short of entering our literary lives and we will soon have people penning poems (I won’t be surprised if this already is done). “Light gele hotey” (we lost power) was the only believable excuse that school teachers accepted in lieu of half-finished homework. We all were sympathetic to a common cause. We almost accept this unforgivable inconvenience as a veritable certainty; to such an extent that generators are a thriving market commodity.

Dilip writes on inefficiency connotations of such sales although they result in positive numbers for the nation’s GDP. Most commenters write on and mention the broken window fallacy and argue on the economics jargon and technicalities of the issue but not a single one talks about the existence of this market for generators. I think Dilip secretly wished to highlight this apathetic attitude that has accepted loss of power as an integral part of our daily lives. My dad proudly told me the other day that his office is now hooked on an inverter (a generator that kicks in automatically following a power outrage) so that there is no loss of productivity. Of course, the fact that you can neither run all computers at once on its feeble power nor switch on the air-conditioners. Is this really a convenience? We have accepted our fate and resigned ourselves in living in an urban environment with sporadic and unreliable power supply; something that most developed nations take for granted.

We may succeed in increasing our GDP by buying more generators and inverters but at the end of the day, it definitely is a cost that we otherwise wouldn’t have incurred. The market for reliable power supply definitely exists and (I guess) only Bombay has a private company that supplies power and predictably, the service is comparatively reliable.