Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

When shocking news occurs and hits the Web, it usually persists for a week or so, then trailing off in a pretty simmer of glowing embers. The breaking news of India’s massive power outage – which claimed 21 of India’s 28 states – continues to blaze on though. Despite the power being fully restored by the end of the next day, the world continues to talk about this outage in a new light.

At surface level, this incident clearly calls for increased attention to power protection strategies, but when digging deeper, more complex issues are increasingly being exposed, such as, for example, the country’s hope and anticipation of becoming a new economic super power.

NPR reported recently on this issue, where it seems India’s path to establishing itself is now consumed by the darkness which engulfed 670 million other citizens last Tuesday.

NPR’s (News - Alert) Linda Wertheimer reported, “The Indian power cuts exposed an inadequate, outdated infrastructure that had suffered from prolonged underinvestment, yet, on the day the lights went out, India's minister of power was promoted into a new job.” 

This doesn’t seem to be behaviors typically administered by an up-and-comer in the economic arena. As Wertheimer added, “In China, such outages are all but unheard of, and in case where embarrassing failures are exposed, the political responsible generally face harsher treatment than promotion.”

“I think it reveals…that India's dream of becoming an economic superpower is at risk of fading. It's widely believed by energy experts that unless India fixes its current antiquated infrastructure [and]… generates more power more efficiently, that dream of being on par with China will wither. India is producing a fraction of the power that China is producing - by a magnitude of four times China is outpacing India,” said NPR’s Julie McCarthy.

While power began slowly being restored, it didn’t seem to make a big enough dent in the hundreds of millions who were suffering the aftermath of the massive outage. The New York Times reported on this aspect of the case, stating that the responding statements made by Mr. Shinde, who was promoted to home minister that same day, “were mocked by a number of political observers and became grist for severe criticism from opposition lawmakers. Prakash Javadekar, a spokesman for the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party, said that the government was merely trying to divert attention from its own incompetence.”

A recent Diplomatic Courier blog elaborates with a statement from former Power Minister Sursh Prabhu, who was reported as saying that “how they reacted to this crisis shows the lack of leadership in this government…This is the central problem in the power sector. There is a lack of political will to deal with the issues at the root of all this crisis.”

Shinde has even gone so far to compare the incident to other massive “similar” power failures in years past between the U.S. and Brazil, but shouldn’t this issue reside in the area where it happened in the first place?

Amidst all of this confusion and political banter, one thing remains true – power protection plays a much larger role than most of us thought – where today it even determines a county’s economic global stance. If this doesn’t stress the necessity of strong, reliable, uninterruptable power protection products and services, then I don’t know what does! Clearly, power protection is no longer just for keeping you out of the dark, but is now determinant of global and political perceptions – and scrutiny.

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