17 hour Power Cuts And Power Holidays Begin in Andhra

Thanks to ‘the way’ everything works in India and grandeur vision and strategies of us, the people and our leaders, this is that time of the year to reap some special benefits. Yes, I am talking about so called ‘scheduled’ power outages. Technically they are scheduled as we all know there must be outages, though the schedules change everyday and will be revealed only on the following day.

On 1st of March, we had a 14 hour power cut, first day of this year to mark the record. We thought we were quite well prepared this time, with installing an inverter and batteries enough to supply essentials for about 6 hours in a stretch. But, we were wrong. Power cuts are happening in such a haphazard frequency that these systems could barely charge and bailing out with crying beeps within a couple of hours.

We thought 14 hours will be our worst day and things would improve. But defying our naive optimism, we had a 17 hour power cut on 2nd of March. Now, we officially lost all hope that inverters could offer any help, if this continues. For today, our last minute preparations included firing a small diesel run generator. Hope, it will work out.

For those of you reading this blog from a place, where a power ‘outage’ is really news, note that my parents and all neighbors here are asking me to clarify that this is anything but normal at this time of the year and not at all a reason to be surprised or shocked.

This is the state of ‘power’ affairs in my place in Andhra, India, officially marked as a rural area. Though, most of us proudly say Agriculture as the backbone of India’s economy and praise farmers as their demi ‘food’ angels, they are the least tended to when it comes to distributing power, (most things for that matter).  They are not a sizeable market for most and considered next best to the poorest in terms purchasing power. Of course, no powerful politician or official lives in rural places anymore, so there is no reason to consider for a ‘fair’ distribution of anything if its not the time of elections.

And also its now official, that Industries in Andhra will be forced to take a one-day-a-week vacation as State run electricity boards will not be able to supply power for a full week. That also means, workers will be forced out of jobs for one day a week, obviously without pay.