In the recent turn of events I came across a gentleman who
used to be in the Power Industry. No, he was not an obnoxious politician or a corrupt high profile cop instead, he was, unlike the formers, an intelligent and
ambitious family man who failed in his pursuit of doing something good for this
country. Needless, as it is, to say that he wasn't the only one who couldn't script a destination to this quest but one of very few who I got the
opportunity to have a nice and yummy lunch with. Interestingly, it doesn't take
me too much time these days to come to a conversation of substance and riveting
content.
He told me about his story of pursuing something
entrepreneurial and patriotic. As most of you are wondering right now, I also
had my assumptions that business and profits were the real objectives while
patriotism a cliche cover of his story. Additionally, a part of me still
doesn’t believe the intentions were as Gandhian
as presented but there was enough punch and realism in this story to unsettle
me.
I don’t like digging deep into the roots and facts behind
the sorry state of my nation but this one conversation did foster me to open 10
different tabs on my explorer comprising “The Annual Power Report by the Public
Finance Ministry of India”, “articles on theft of power in India by WSJ,
Bloggers, Indian Express and The Hindu”, “State of power in India by Indian
Energy Portal” and a lot more. Trust me it was a brutal, painful and deflating
experience. Not for the fact that I had to read a lot of such content on a
Saturday Night when most my friends were clubbing and partying, as some still are
far from the Radar of “Evil Dhoble of Mumbai”, but because it was extremely
depressing for a young Indian who grew up fighting his cynical relatives about
how India doesn’t suck.
This gentleman told me that he wanted to enterprise with an
idea of providing “Smart Grids” for a more effective tracking and distribution
mechanism for electricity in India. For this, he had to approach and extend his
humble, sacred, customary favours to Ministers, Babus and even private players;
infamously known as “bribe”. He didn’t mind doing that as he had been an Indian
long enough to know that the insane amount of tax he is paying to remunerate
government employees doesn’t account for his right to be heard by them. To be
able to present your proposal for the betterment of this nation, or not, is an
esteemed privilege for which you have to pay at a rate which is sometimes at
par with an appointment, to be advocated for a terrorist attack, with Ram
Jethmalani. Unfortunately, for our guy, the
worst case scenario determination was way below the actual.
After dispensing, what was claimed to be a hefty Shagun to commence the project, the true
colours of these spineless servants of this nation VIBGYORed and the prism of
democracy was slyly and gradually brought into perspective. “This can’t be
done. There is a huge vote bank that will be directly affected by this Tughlaqana and impulsive move. We can’t disappoint
our loyal vote bank for a tentative and far-fetched technology. Let’s do
it when the time is right” said an official, representing a minister, to put a
red-reject-rubber seal on the proposal and embarked a journey out of the
delusional tricolours and a Tagore written literary masterpiece. Our guy left
the idea of “Smart Grids” for the “right time” to be implemented with a promise
to not be around if it does happen and instead founded of a money spinning
Non-profit Organisation. He cherishes his decision to quit at the right time
and not get all jobs/King/Gandhi
about his passion because it wasn’t America or a foreign power fighting Indian
of 1930s he lived in. It was an India paralysed by the atrocities of Indians.
I had an option of putting this post to an end here and
conclude the long due season 2 of TV series Madmen decaying in the hard drive
of my rented laptop but I guess when you know a little too much about a problem,
from a night of knowledge from 10 amazing tabs of that explorer, it doesn’t let
you be at peace without venting, in my case blogging, to the imaginary
confidant I have found in you. The knowledgeable ones must have already known
the situation of power industry in the nation, the proactive ones would have
already search for the tabs I have mentioned earlier in the post but from now
onwards, it is an exclusive perspective I present to the lazy ones like me who
want to be spoon fed all the information on one platform in one go.
India is a developing nation with 4th highest
consumption of power only behind US, China and Russia, if I am not wrong, in
the same order. We are struggling to meet the requirements of this nation by
generating power from renewable and non-renewable resources like Coal, Oil
& petroleum, natural gas, hydro and nuclear projects, wind and what not.
From all the electricity that we generate an alarming 30% is stolen by individuals,
communities, small time adhoc-distributors and, wait for it, Big business
houses like L&T, Kores, Pfizer, GTL, etc. This percentage is 1-4 in
developed nations. Everyone knows who is stealing the power it is just that the
very corrupt nature of our administration and never ending judicial process
won’t allow actions like installing “Smart Grids” for an effective distribution
of electricity in the country.
The annual transmission and distribution loss (blah, THEFT)
is approximately 10% of the GDP percentage fall in the financial year 2011-12.
The cloud of darkness is literally approaching us and the best that we can do
is to be more aware of the situation and do our bit to conserve energy. If you
are motivated enough to take a radical action by inventing “Smarter Grids”, I
would suggest you to relax and firstly unravel the way to implement it
logistically, socially, financially and, most importantly, politically. Shared
below are the links to the tabs I was talking about. Thank you for reading this
post and please make sure you keep reading but preferably in mornings and on
your phones for power’s sake because if at all god is present in modern times, it
most certainly should start residing in your electricity reading meters. There
are no Avengers in the real world to
stop Loki from stealing the unlimited
renewable source of energy from you. In this world, you have to avenge against
the residents of this very Blue Planet
for the very limited source of energy we have in 21st Century.
* Image Source: The Hindu
