Inspite of my busy schedules I think about and imagine how life will be going on in India and especially when I talked to my parents few minutes ago. I was again informed about a big problem in city ( Kanpur ) electricity supply or power outage. The problem is quite linked to environmental pollution and affects the population in an equal manner as does any other kind of pollution. Moving ahead in the direction of India being a developed nation or not? I will say this factor of electricity is going to play a major role. Again, I will not stop myself from saying that public awareness and more awareness. Even an illiterate has to become a literate now even if he/she has never attended the school. We all have to act as one unified force in improving this problem. Let me start again from certain facts that I gathered in past from my locality/community (Awadhpuri) and no doubt these facts play a major role in deterioration of our power problems. I will start from a very common human ignorance and act of extreme selfishness. It's very easy to spot out some wires tapping around main power line if you go and visit areas around and in Awadhpuri, Kanpur . What are these wires and why they are hanged carelessly on main power line? These wires are what you call in U.P. Hindi "Katiya". The purpose of this wire is to steal power and electricity supply at the cost of people who are law abiding and pay the electricity bills regularly. It is very easy to spot out these illegal wires in my area by some unlawful people. They don't even pay a 50 paisa for the electricity they are consuming and above all you can find them wasting electricity all 24 hours. Now this involves lot of other problems. The people who are involved in such acts are not only risking their lives but also the lives of the people living in nearby community. It has been observed by me, many times, that these wires sometimes hang partially and to be more factual, I have even witnessed a cow being dead when electrocuted by one of such illegal wire connection. It should not be taken as a blatant remark when I say that these people who are doing such illegal act of stealing electricity are simply illiterate with no sense of community as well as no civic sense.

But when such illegal acts are happening what our government and law enforcement bodies are doing? Are they taking some actions? Do they visit the localities to find out why government needs to order power cuts in city? In today's world of 21st century we are still living in days and nights of complete blackouts. Do we deserve to be called as developed nation? Or most importantly, do our citizens consider this problem to be a big problem in making us eligible to be counted among developed nations? And above all can we get rid of this problem at all?

Government and law enforcement bodies, whenever it comes to thinking about these two words, every Indian say " yeh to India hai, yahan kuch nahin ho sakta hai". I remember very well, it was in summer of the year 1999, I was at home on weekend during my IIT Kanpur days. Suddenly the power goes and there is big explosion around the corner of the houses nearby where this big transformer is located. We all guessed this is going to be a big problem. It must have been above 40 degree C in the summer afternoon and some of us ran toward the transformer to find out what exactly happened, even though we couldn't figure out anything except that the problem was a big one. We called the KESA office and first of all we found no one picking up the phone for more than half an hour and when someone picked, he informed that no one was at the office and so the repair can't be done until evening. We waited till evening and it was late evening when someone from the KESA arrived, an engineer, and he started looking at the transformer. After few hours he declared that this problem will not be solved till next two days. On asking the engineer about the problem, he said, he feels someone has poured little water instead of transformer oil in that transformer. I also came to know that the official who was responsible to change the transformer oil that time stole some oil and poured some water instead. This is ridiculous to me even today and even at that time. Being an engineer and having some knowledge of electrical engineering, I felt ashamed of our electricity department and ashamed of a responsible employee who did this act. The transformer oil has certain functions to perform in the working of a transformer and one of the functions is to keep the transformer cool while acting as heat sink. It is meant to be in the transformer and water is meant for other uses and not for cooling transformers which regulate the huge amount of electricity.  This is just one instance to point out towards the direction of power outage problem.

Other most common problem lies in the government official working style. How many times we spot out an electricity official just coming in and looking for illegal electricity theft? In my locality, to be very frank, I would say may be one time a year or not at all. Inspite of that visit no action is taken for some undiscloseable reasons (I would say). If for an example, we consider that a person is stealing electricity for one bulb which is 100 watt and he has this illegal wire connection to extract this much power then he is also affecting corresponding power supply in houses that are legally authorized for that power. This is one factor due to which you may find sometimes in many localities that the voltage is very low in houses and lights are ON but they are not better than lighting a candle. Why is this happening? Why the officials not going and taking actions and asking such illegal users to stop such activities? I have no doubt that government of India has some criminal procedures against such individuals who are involved in electricity thefts.

You may say that I always praise America , but I say what I see. It was in year 2003 when there was a power outage in North America and Canada for approximately 24 hours or so. I was surprised that the Governors of various affected states and even US president was concerned about it. More disgusting for me was a news coverage in CNN and FOX news channel, which immediately focused on the power outage in India . The comments were more disgusting for me as an Indian National: how people must be living in India ! Or what a ridiculous situation! The solution for Americans was that we will not let it happen again and here I see it when few days back they were remembering the biggest blackout in American history which is and will be never repeated. Surprisingly, these people are so law abiding and committed to the maintenance of human life style.

I will stop writing here with few more questions to be answered by our country and each and every citizen. What we want for our future generations? Do we want a perfect democratic nation with all the utilities and amenities in hand? Is it at all possible to some extent atleast? If possible then when we will be taking action? Can one fellow citizen be a good advisor and a friend to other fellow citizen? If the answer to my last question is yes then I feel we can overcome all challenges in our country including this power problem. The key to all the problems is "awareness" in all respects. The consequence of overcoming one such problem will be a giant leap towards a developed nation!

Nitin

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