[Power
shortages and a creaky road and rail network have weighed heavily on the
country's efforts to industrialize. Grappling with the slowest economic growth
in nine years, Delhi recently scaled back a target to pump $1 trillion into
infrastructure over the next five years.]
By Reuters
 |
Altaf Qadri/Associated Press
A stranded passenger brushes his
teeth after a blackout shut down
a train station in
|
The lights in Delhi and seven states went out in the early hours, leaving the
capital's workers sweltering overnight and then stranded at metro stations in
the morning rush hour as trains were cancelled.
Electricity supplies were restored to Delhi and much of Uttar Pradesh, a state with more people than Brazil , by midday . But the
states of Rajasthan, Punjab and Jammu
and Kashmir were
still without full power in the early evening.
Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde said all power would be
restored within hours.
Power shortages and a creaky road and rail network have
weighed heavily on the country's efforts to industrialize. Grappling with the
slowest economic growth in nine years, Delhi recently scaled back a target to pump $1 trillion into
infrastructure over the next five years.
Major industries have dedicated power plants or large
diesel generators and are shielded from outages -- but the inconsistent supply
affects investment and disrupts small businesses. Office blocks, hotels and
large apartment buildings all use backup diesel generators.
Chaos reigned on Delhi 's always-hectic roads on Monday as stop lights failed and
thousands of commuters abandoned the metro. Water pumping stations ran dry.
"First, no power since 2 in the morning, then no water
to take a shower and now the metro is delayed by 13 minutes after being stuck
in traffic for half an hour," said 32-year-old Keshav Shah, who works 30
km outside the capital.
"As if I wasn't dreading Monday enough, this had to
happen."
The government's top economic planning adviser, Montek
Singh Ahluwalia, said the blackout may have been caused by a mix of coalshortages and other problems on the
grid.
"I've no doubt that this is the area that we need to
show improved performance in, and we also need show a clear sense of what we
are doing to prevent it," Ahluwalia told Reuters at his office, where
power had been restored some hours earlier.
WEAK MONSOON
He said the grid was better networked now than five years
ago and power sharing was more common.
But blackouts lasting up to eight hours a day are frequent
in much of the country and have sparked angry protests on the industrial
fringes of Delhi this summer, the hottest in years.
At least 200 trains were cancelled with some stranded.
Authorities made restoring services to hospitals and transport systems a
priority.
Shinde blamed the outage on an incident near Agra , the home of the Taj Mahal, without giving details. He said repairs
were being carried out fast compared to a similar grid outage in the United States four years ago.
"In 2008, there was a power failure in the USA . Their Federal Energy Regulatory Commission asked India for assistance and it took four days to restore the
power," he told reporters.
The outage forced the shutdown of a nuclear power plant at
Rawatbhata in the desert state of Rajasthan. It will take about 48 hours to
restart. Hydroelectric plants in the Himalayas and thermal power stations in the wheat belt of Punjab and
Haryana were slowly returning to normal.
Officials at Delhi 's international airport said flights were unaffected. Delhi 's private power company, BSES, said northern India last not suffered such a major outage since 2001.
"This kind of breakdown shows that the system needs
some big overhaul to increase credibility and increase the confidence in the
system of India ," said Jagannadhan Thunuguntla, equity head at
Delhi-based brokerage SMC Capital.
"More homework needs to be done."
(Additional reporting by Sanjeev Choudhary, Ketan Bondre,
Anurag Kotoky, Rajesh Kumar, Nidhi Verma, Matthias Williams, Sharat Pradhan and
Nandita Bose; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Nick Macfie)
A drunk-driving crackdown bears
fruit
 |
| Say: “The |
In contrast to dozens of
government departments and agencies that are shabby, corrupt and ineffective,
the headquarters of the traffic police stands out as a gleaming hive of
activity. Morale is now said to be high. Drunk-driving fines collected since
December, at $11 for each violation, have brought in as much as all the traffic
fines collected last year. Under a new “encouragement allowance”, the cops get
to keep one-sixth of the revenues.
Though the department remains
short of essential equipment, including breathalysers, statistics show that
road accidents have fallen markedly since the campaign began. So too, says
Deputy Inspector-General Ganesh Rai, the man behind the initiative, have crimes
such as domestic violence, gang fights and bag-snatching. Junior traffic cops,
rarely the object of public affection, say they are basking in gratitude from
the parents of teenagers and the wives of drunks.
Meanwhile Mr Rai has introduced
monthly evaluations, where accident statistics, fines levied and complaints
received are compared among units across the city. Police appear more willing
to crack down on other offences, and the numbers suggest that petty corruption
has fallen. New businesses are popping up, providing late-night transport for
partygoers.
Not everyone is pleased. The
entertainment industry and some politicians have lobbied against the new
enforcement drive. While Mr Rai was out of the country recently, some of his
own senior officers attempted to smear him in the media. Under his leadership,
their own take from traffic kickbacks had apparently fallen.
