Surving on 2/3 hours of power supply : More than supply and demand
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: January 11, 2012 -

The pathetic two or three or maybe four hours of power supply that is currently being supplied to most of the localities of Imphal on a single day cannot be merely about demand outstripping supply but could be more about official apathy and rank inefficiency coming to the fore.

Not only is it absurd that the capital of a State should be fed power supply for only four hours at the most on a day but it is a perverse act of taking the people for granted for too long.

Logically and scientifically the failure to meet the electricity needs of the people should be ascribed to supply failing to meet demand and if this is the case then the logical question that follows is what is the power requirement of say Imphal city at peak hour and what is the supply ?

Not us, but the Electricity Department had put the power requirements during peak hours at 180 Megawatts during the Winter and 110 Megawatts during Summer.

This was in mid-2011 and except in extraordinary situations, there could not have been a quantum jump in the power requirements of the people in the space of a few months but it is irrefutable that there has been a sharp slump in supply.

Not that situation was better but from a daily power supply of 6/7 hours daily it has now dipped to 2/3 or maybe four hours in a day.

Something, somewhere is wrong and while no one seems the least bothered, the humiliation of having to depend on the hurricane lamp, with the non-availability of kerosene compounding matter, has to be endured by the common people.

It is and has never been the man holding the Ministerial portfolio of the Power Department who has had to depend on the kerosene lamp to lit up his residence.

It has never been the Chief Minister and in all probability it has never been the high and mighty officials of the Power Department who would have faced the inconveniences of groping their way through the dimly lit room. Money can buy power generators or money coupled with influence can guarantee VIP connection or uninterrupted power supply.

India has been talking about numerous electrification programmes such as the Prime Minister's package under Central Pool of Non-Lapsable Resources, the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin Vidyutikaran Yojana, Restructured Accelerated Power Development and Reforms Programme, State Rural Electrification etc.

It is amid these high sounding programmes taken up at the all India level that Imphal continues to reel under 2/3 or four hours of power supply in 24 hours.

These are programmes and the irony is no one, least of all the Electricity Department, has cared to explain if electrification means putting up the infrastructure for power supply such as the electric poles and transmission wires minus the actual act of supplying electricity or actually supplying electricity to the people.

We have specifically focused on Imphal for if this is the situation in the capital of the State then the situation in the villages and other districts can only be imagined.

Official apathy hangs heavy in the air. Following an RTI application filed by a young social worker in 2011, certain points came to light, which did not cast the Electricity Department in any good light.

While the Electricity Department had officially put the power requirements of the State at 180 MW during peak hours in Winter and 110 MW during peak hours in Summer, this same Department had submitted to the Powers System Operation Corporation Limited, Shillong that the power requirement during peak hour was 90 MW at 8 pm of 19th June 2011.

Likewise the power requirement at 8 am of the same date and year was put at 65 MW. The question is why did the Electricity Department whittle down the power requirement by 20 MW during the peak hour ?

Was there a design to this or was it some clerical error ?

Granted it was for a single day but the trend can be read clearly. Election is within shaking hands distance.

Are the people ready to make this an issue during the election ?