nimo_cn
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Then do tell me who vote for the contractors who execute public engineering and construction jobs.
Power failure in Northern India due to Grid Fault
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nimo_cn
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The fact remains India isn't able to figure out what is wrong with their grid without blaming others.
nimo_cn
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If no one votes for bureaucracy, then how come bureaucracy is everythere, someone has to be responsible?
Bangalorean
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Nobody does.
Contractors are penny pinchers in general, and try to get the cheapest deal possible - quality be damned.
Democracy system 101 for you. Bureaucracy is part of the executive branch.
Bangalorean
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So? How does it change what I said?
Sigh..... You vote for which government you want. Bureaucracy is under the executive branch/government according to the constitution.So? How does it change what I said?
Can it be more clear than this?
QUOTE=Bhadra;548515]The fact remains that Chinese transmission plants and parts are very substandard... as they are dud chaep contractors tend to use that to land up in such a situation...[/QUOTE]
Aside from the usual suspects from Pakistan jihadits and cheap chinese transmissions: India's electricity problems: An area of darkness | The Economist
ON JULY 31st passengers on Delhi's metro, one of India's spiffiest bits of infrastructure and a symbol of its modernisation, felt their trains grind to a halt, some of them deep beneath India's capital. They had to be evacuated. It was just one drama across the north and east of the country, home to over 600m people, half India's population, where successive power cuts struck on July 30th and July 31st. Coal miners were trapped; traffic signals went blank, creating epic snarl-ups; hospitals lost power. Firms without backup diesel generators just had to go without.
By August 1st the grid was sparking back to life. But the blackouts will have a lasting effect. The grit of most Indians was on display: they did not start looting or killing each other. So was the magisterial arrogance of their rulers: ""¦this is not something new to us," said the chairman of Power Grid Corporation, the state-owned body that runs the power-transmission network. "The country is in safe hands."
As if parodying its legendary lack of grip, the government carried out a cabinet reshuffle in the midst of the blackouts, in which the main change was that the home minister, P. Chidambaran, became finance minister (again). Amazingly, the minister of power was promoted to home minister. A blame game began almost immediately as regional leaders, national politicians and officials tried to evade responsibility. Fairly or unfairly, the ruling Congress party is likely to be damaged most.
Beyond the poverty of politics in India, three problems loom large: the narrow fault that caused the blackouts; the wider crisis in India's power sector; and the shoddy state of the country's infrastructure, from roads to power stations, which is a brake on economic development.
On the first, the technical glitch, the best explanation is that some states used more than their quota of power from the national transmission network that links up India's five regional grids. The extra demand may have reflected a disappointing monsoon that forced farmers to pump more water for their fields. In any case, it overburdened the system, causing a cascade of failures. To cut the burden, power plants were shut down, some automatically.
"It could have happened anywhere in the world," argues one industry executive, who blames human error and the greediness of some states, not shoddy equipment. Others reckon that, despite a recent surge in investment, the transmission network is not up to scratch. "You're talking about 40 or 50 years of underinvestment," says Amish Shah of Credit Suisse, a bank.
The transmission network is not the only vulnerable part of the power supply chain, which is one giant bottleneck. Frequent minor blackouts are common. As a result most large firms, and even India's airports, have backup generators or their own mini-power stations.
The pressure will only grow. Demand is expected roughly to double over the next decade as manufacturing output expands and more Indians buy televisions, computers and fridges. That prospect has led to a boom in private investment in new power stations—which should be one of India's big success stories.
But the rest of the supply chain is rotten. Not enough coal is being dug up by the state monopolist, Coal India. Electricity still needs to be shifted around the country, from coal-rich states in the east to the industrial west —yet the transmission system is rickety, as the blackouts showed. Finally, power must be delivered down the "last mile" to homes and businesses. Most local distribution firms are state-owned and all but bankrupt, as politicians insist that tariffs stay low and that big swathes of the population, including farmers, get free power. Many Indians get away with simply stealing it.
Private-sector power plant firms are being squeezed by fuel shortages and by end-customers that are often financial zombies. As a result, says J.P. Chalasani, the boss of Reliance Power, a power-generating firm, "the big worry is that the industry starts cutting back on long-term investment in new plants." Banks also face bad debts from projects that are no longer viable, so troubles in the power-supply business spread to the rest of the economy.
Despite these problems, the government has merely applied sticking plasters and tried to knock heads together. It has ducked fundamental reform, which would probably involve breaking up Coal India, privatising local distribution companies and installing new regulators with teeth. Its reluctance to shake up the power market is coming back to haunt it.
It is true that other parts of India's infrastructure are in somewhat better shape. A vast effort has been made over the past decade to stiffen India's economic backbone, and the results can be seen from a new airport in Delhi and a metro system in Bangalore to the availability of a mobile-phone signal almost everywhere.
Yet without electricity, the life blood of an economy, some of these things will not work—as Delhi's commuters discovered. And there is no question that at least half a decade of government complacency and incompetence is beginning to hurt the private investment that India must rely on. Plenty of trophy projects, which involve experimental public-private partnerships are not making money and face uncertain rules. Another big industry, telecoms, is also in crisis, largely thanks to government graft and erratic regulation. Most economists reckon that India needs to invest a tenth of its GDP in infrastructure every year to sustain growth of 8% or more. Investment has probably slipped well below that. Now that the lights are back on, that is something really to worry about.
Aside from the usual suspects from Pakistan jihadits and cheap chinese transmissions: India's electricity problems: An area of darkness | The Economist
ON JULY 31st passengers on Delhi's metro, one of India's spiffiest bits of infrastructure and a symbol of its modernisation, felt their trains grind to a halt, some of them deep beneath India's capital. They had to be evacuated. It was just one drama across the north and east of the country, home to over 600m people, half India's population, where successive power cuts struck on July 30th and July 31st. Coal miners were trapped; traffic signals went blank, creating epic snarl-ups; hospitals lost power. Firms without backup diesel generators just had to go without.
By August 1st the grid was sparking back to life. But the blackouts will have a lasting effect. The grit of most Indians was on display: they did not start looting or killing each other. So was the magisterial arrogance of their rulers: ""¦this is not something new to us," said the chairman of Power Grid Corporation, the state-owned body that runs the power-transmission network. "The country is in safe hands."
As if parodying its legendary lack of grip, the government carried out a cabinet reshuffle in the midst of the blackouts, in which the main change was that the home minister, P. Chidambaran, became finance minister (again). Amazingly, the minister of power was promoted to home minister. A blame game began almost immediately as regional leaders, national politicians and officials tried to evade responsibility. Fairly or unfairly, the ruling Congress party is likely to be damaged most.
Beyond the poverty of politics in India, three problems loom large: the narrow fault that caused the blackouts; the wider crisis in India's power sector; and the shoddy state of the country's infrastructure, from roads to power stations, which is a brake on economic development.
On the first, the technical glitch, the best explanation is that some states used more than their quota of power from the national transmission network that links up India's five regional grids. The extra demand may have reflected a disappointing monsoon that forced farmers to pump more water for their fields. In any case, it overburdened the system, causing a cascade of failures. To cut the burden, power plants were shut down, some automatically.
"It could have happened anywhere in the world," argues one industry executive, who blames human error and the greediness of some states, not shoddy equipment. Others reckon that, despite a recent surge in investment, the transmission network is not up to scratch. "You're talking about 40 or 50 years of underinvestment," says Amish Shah of Credit Suisse, a bank.
The transmission network is not the only vulnerable part of the power supply chain, which is one giant bottleneck. Frequent minor blackouts are common. As a result most large firms, and even India's airports, have backup generators or their own mini-power stations.
The pressure will only grow. Demand is expected roughly to double over the next decade as manufacturing output expands and more Indians buy televisions, computers and fridges. That prospect has led to a boom in private investment in new power stations—which should be one of India's big success stories.
But the rest of the supply chain is rotten. Not enough coal is being dug up by the state monopolist, Coal India. Electricity still needs to be shifted around the country, from coal-rich states in the east to the industrial west —yet the transmission system is rickety, as the blackouts showed. Finally, power must be delivered down the "last mile" to homes and businesses. Most local distribution firms are state-owned and all but bankrupt, as politicians insist that tariffs stay low and that big swathes of the population, including farmers, get free power. Many Indians get away with simply stealing it.
Private-sector power plant firms are being squeezed by fuel shortages and by end-customers that are often financial zombies. As a result, says J.P. Chalasani, the boss of Reliance Power, a power-generating firm, "the big worry is that the industry starts cutting back on long-term investment in new plants." Banks also face bad debts from projects that are no longer viable, so troubles in the power-supply business spread to the rest of the economy.
Despite these problems, the government has merely applied sticking plasters and tried to knock heads together. It has ducked fundamental reform, which would probably involve breaking up Coal India, privatising local distribution companies and installing new regulators with teeth. Its reluctance to shake up the power market is coming back to haunt it.
It is true that other parts of India's infrastructure are in somewhat better shape. A vast effort has been made over the past decade to stiffen India's economic backbone, and the results can be seen from a new airport in Delhi and a metro system in Bangalore to the availability of a mobile-phone signal almost everywhere.
Yet without electricity, the life blood of an economy, some of these things will not work—as Delhi's commuters discovered. And there is no question that at least half a decade of government complacency and incompetence is beginning to hurt the private investment that India must rely on. Plenty of trophy projects, which involve experimental public-private partnerships are not making money and face uncertain rules. Another big industry, telecoms, is also in crisis, largely thanks to government graft and erratic regulation. Most economists reckon that India needs to invest a tenth of its GDP in infrastructure every year to sustain growth of 8% or more. Investment has probably slipped well below that. Now that the lights are back on, that is something really to worry about.
Bangalorean
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This is the reason that Chinese must not comment about democracy and stuff.
Politicians are voted in, and they form the legislature. They sit in parliament. They are voted out, or re-voted in every 5 years. These politicians take high-level decisions.
The bureaucracy OTOH, is a vast and monolithic body. The people in the bureaucracy are called IAS (Indian Administrative Services) officers. Entering the bureaucracy requires you to pass an immensely tough competitive examination, held nationwide. There is a lot of scrambling to get into the prestigious IAS, and only a very small selected number of people make it through the selection process.
The bureaucracy is not voted in. The politicians may take high-level decisions, but the nitty-gritty practical details are usually in the hands of the bureaucracy.
You must be kidding me. In a country there are different ministries. Like foreign minister, financial minister etc.This is the reason that Chinese must not comment about democracy and stuff.
Politicians are voted in, and they form the legislature. They sit in parliament. They are voted out, or re-voted in every 5 years. These politicians take high-level decisions.
The bureaucracy OTOH, is a vast and monolithic body. The people in the bureaucracy are called IAS (Indian Administrative Services) officers. Entering the bureaucracy requires you to pass an immensely tough competitive examination, held nationwide. There is a lot of scrambling to get into the prestigious IAS, and only a very small selected number of people make it through the selection process.
The bureaucracy is not voted in. The politicians may take high-level decisions, but the nitty-gritty practical details are usually in the hands of the bureaucracy.
Each of them lead a branch of the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy are under their supervision. You vote for your political leadership. To claim that you have no influence over the bureacracy just because you dont vote them directly is just hilarious.
BTW I didnt know you have to belong to a certain group to talk about democracy. Dosnt that defy the very purpose?
Bangalorean
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That's not my point.You must be kidding me. In a country there are different ministries. Like foreign minister, financial minister etc.
Each of them lead a branch of the bureaucracy.
The bureaucracy are under their supervision. You vote for your political leadership. To claim that you have no influence over the bureacracy just because you dont vote them directly is just hilarious.
BTW I didnt know you have to belong to a certain group to talk about democracy. Dosnt that defy the very purpose?
Politicians will take a high-level decision and release funds for a certain project, say upgradation of some part of the grid. The bureaucracy will actually do the job. They will issue bids, decide whose equipment to buy, and so on. Even after the politician changes, the bureaucracy will see the project through to completion (unless the new politician actively tries to stop the project). Even more than the bureaucracy, it is the technical contractors who are responsible for choosing the equipment, etc.
I am not blaming China for India's grid failure mind you - I am just making a general statement.
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A nice conversation between Nitin Pai and Rajagopalan as to why Nothern Grid has failed. There is also lot of information on power generating sources, issues, politics and policy in power sector. I recommend others to view this.
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ani82v
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Mitali Saran.... I am in love with her.....articles 
Mitali Saran: Whistling in the dark
It could be that the prime minister is very clever and we citizens are very stupid. That must be why I, for one, cannot understand what on god's earth he's thinking. I'm referring to the mysterious connection between two-thirds of India going dark for the better part of two days, and the power minister immediately getting promoted to home.
I don't understand why there is so much angst at him being promoted! He is just reassigned/reshuffuled and these assignments were never related to performance what so ever. I even doubt that the way Indian administration works you can even measure performance that way, if at all.
Five hundred trains stranded, 600 million people left without electricity and many millions eventually without water, a hundred thousand irresistible puns in the world press... It all had the sort of bad-but-hypnotic disaster movie quality we've come to expect of Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 fame). Sweltering power outages for hours on end, and the attendant loss of productivity, are not exactly the headline-hitting news in India that they would be in, say, the United States, but even chronically whipped Indians collectively agreed that Monday and Tuesday sucked epically. I've only written this at the last minute because I was so worried that turning on my computer would trip the northern grid again.
It's a sorry fact that the things that get said by the government, and speculated about by the press, bear little or no relation to what actually happens. It's kind of like a black economy of the truth: you can safely assume that at least half of the real cause and effect in any government-related event will remain off the official record. Truth being off the table, that leaves us with what television anchors like to call "the optics", or "what it looks like to us simple-minded citizens".
The optics, in this case, are that the prime minister rewarded the man who presided over the greatest power outage in world history (yay Guinness Book of World Records!), with a critical portfolio that deals, among other things, with internal security. And the only incontrovertible thing that can be said about that is that if Sushil Kumar Shinde the power minister went out with a whimper, at least he started his new job with a bang.
I'm sure Mr Shinde is a nice fella who tries his best, and I'm absolutely sure he didn't personally turn off the lights or plant the bombs in Pune that inaugurated his new gig. But his incompetence isn't unusual. It's not as if anyone is assigned to a ministry on the basis of having any competence in said ministry; clearly they just require a warm body to hold files, else it wouldn't be possible for a guy to be in charge of, say, textiles one day and space the next.
Besides, Mr Shinde is merely senior management — ultimately the buck stops with the guy at the top. There are various theories floating around to explain the prime minister's cabinet moves, but the truth is either too boring, or too cravenly shady, or both, for him to let the country in on it. At any rate, regardless of why exactly, really, truly the northern, eastern, and northeastern grids collapsed, or why exactly, really, truly Mr Shinde was promoted to home instead of either being made to fix power or being relieved of it, or why exactly, really, truly power is now an "additional charge" ministry (get it, get it?) the bottom line is that it looks really, really bad, not to say dim.
Worse, it looks bad not only to us Indians, but to the whole world. And while successive governments have repeatedly made clear that the opinion of regular Indians means diddly-squat in the endless power games that pass for governance, the one thing that makes them blow a fuse is to be perceived as, how shall I put this, not-a-superpower. You would think that this week would have shocked them into some kind of action that showed them in a positive light — like maybe getting serious about actually beginning to fix the power sector — but all we've gotten is a kind of sulky silence.
A government in gridlock is a government disempowered. If the UPA judges that it has only six trustworthy people, perhaps it's time for them to induct another bright spark or two. Maybe that would help reverse the dark tide of voter disenchantment.
In the immortal words from Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. The UPA seems to have lit upon a brilliant perversion of that logic: No power, no responsibility. Or perhaps they just don't realise what it looks like. But the staggering scale of this week's outage, and the staggering failure of the government to look like it gives a rat's arse, suggests its total immunity to a little something called accountability. In which case it's the government that's in the dark.
Mitali Saran: Whistling in the dark
It could be that the prime minister is very clever and we citizens are very stupid. That must be why I, for one, cannot understand what on god's earth he's thinking. I'm referring to the mysterious connection between two-thirds of India going dark for the better part of two days, and the power minister immediately getting promoted to home.
I don't understand why there is so much angst at him being promoted! He is just reassigned/reshuffuled and these assignments were never related to performance what so ever. I even doubt that the way Indian administration works you can even measure performance that way, if at all.
Five hundred trains stranded, 600 million people left without electricity and many millions eventually without water, a hundred thousand irresistible puns in the world press... It all had the sort of bad-but-hypnotic disaster movie quality we've come to expect of Roland Emmerich (of Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012 fame). Sweltering power outages for hours on end, and the attendant loss of productivity, are not exactly the headline-hitting news in India that they would be in, say, the United States, but even chronically whipped Indians collectively agreed that Monday and Tuesday sucked epically. I've only written this at the last minute because I was so worried that turning on my computer would trip the northern grid again.
It's a sorry fact that the things that get said by the government, and speculated about by the press, bear little or no relation to what actually happens. It's kind of like a black economy of the truth: you can safely assume that at least half of the real cause and effect in any government-related event will remain off the official record. Truth being off the table, that leaves us with what television anchors like to call "the optics", or "what it looks like to us simple-minded citizens".
The optics, in this case, are that the prime minister rewarded the man who presided over the greatest power outage in world history (yay Guinness Book of World Records!), with a critical portfolio that deals, among other things, with internal security. And the only incontrovertible thing that can be said about that is that if Sushil Kumar Shinde the power minister went out with a whimper, at least he started his new job with a bang.
I'm sure Mr Shinde is a nice fella who tries his best, and I'm absolutely sure he didn't personally turn off the lights or plant the bombs in Pune that inaugurated his new gig. But his incompetence isn't unusual. It's not as if anyone is assigned to a ministry on the basis of having any competence in said ministry; clearly they just require a warm body to hold files, else it wouldn't be possible for a guy to be in charge of, say, textiles one day and space the next.
Besides, Mr Shinde is merely senior management — ultimately the buck stops with the guy at the top. There are various theories floating around to explain the prime minister's cabinet moves, but the truth is either too boring, or too cravenly shady, or both, for him to let the country in on it. At any rate, regardless of why exactly, really, truly the northern, eastern, and northeastern grids collapsed, or why exactly, really, truly Mr Shinde was promoted to home instead of either being made to fix power or being relieved of it, or why exactly, really, truly power is now an "additional charge" ministry (get it, get it?) the bottom line is that it looks really, really bad, not to say dim.
Worse, it looks bad not only to us Indians, but to the whole world. And while successive governments have repeatedly made clear that the opinion of regular Indians means diddly-squat in the endless power games that pass for governance, the one thing that makes them blow a fuse is to be perceived as, how shall I put this, not-a-superpower. You would think that this week would have shocked them into some kind of action that showed them in a positive light — like maybe getting serious about actually beginning to fix the power sector — but all we've gotten is a kind of sulky silence.
A government in gridlock is a government disempowered. If the UPA judges that it has only six trustworthy people, perhaps it's time for them to induct another bright spark or two. Maybe that would help reverse the dark tide of voter disenchantment.
In the immortal words from Spiderman, with great power comes great responsibility. The UPA seems to have lit upon a brilliant perversion of that logic: No power, no responsibility. Or perhaps they just don't realise what it looks like. But the staggering scale of this week's outage, and the staggering failure of the government to look like it gives a rat's arse, suggests its total immunity to a little something called accountability. In which case it's the government that's in the dark.
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Modi offers 2,000 MW to power-starved Centre, demands cheaper gas
Modi offers 2,000 MW to power-starved Centre, demands cheaper gas
Modi offers 2,000 MW to power-starved Centre, demands cheaper gas
Predator
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the current central ministers are nikaamas, they will mouth some platitudes and keep ignoring the urgent matter
>>Modi pointed out that his state energy minister Saurabh patel had written two letters two years ago to the then Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, saying that due to inadequate inter-regional transmission corridors, "a very significant portion of the surplus power in Gujarat gets stranded".
Invite power intensive industries to Gujarat
>>Modi pointed out that his state energy minister Saurabh patel had written two letters two years ago to the then Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde, saying that due to inadequate inter-regional transmission corridors, "a very significant portion of the surplus power in Gujarat gets stranded".
Invite power intensive industries to Gujarat
sob
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Hats off to the planning that is going on in Gujarat.
This is the only state which is inviting Industry and at the same time they are also investing in infrastructure.
We have seen the case with Maharashtra in 90s and TN a decade later where they kept on inviting industries with sops but forgot to invest in infrastructure.
This is the only state which is inviting Industry and at the same time they are also investing in infrastructure.
We have seen the case with Maharashtra in 90s and TN a decade later where they kept on inviting industries with sops but forgot to invest in infrastructure.
ani82v
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Gujarat has a 15,906-MW capacity against its requirement of 12,000 MW. By the year-end, the state plans to raise its capacity to 18,000 MW.
Holy shit.
Virendra
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Can't agree more. They need to leverage the surplus power capacity. Way to go Gujarat !!
