POWER FAILURES HIT MILLIONS IN INDIA

INDIA POWER GRID COLLAPSES
FOR SECOND TIME IN TWO DAYS

www.usatoday.com - India's energy crisis cascaded over half the country Tuesday when three of its regional grids collapsed, leaving 620 million people without government-supplied electricity in one of the world's biggest-ever blackouts. Hundreds of trains stalled across the country and traffic lights went out, causing widespread traffic jams in New Delhi. Electric crematoria stopped operating, some with bodies half burnt, power officials said. Emergency workers rushed generators to coal mines to rescue miners trapped underground. 
The massive power failure - a day after a similar, but smaller - has raised serious concerns about India's outdated infrastructure and the government's inability to meet its huge appetite for energy as the country aspires to become a regional economic superpower. Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde blamed the new crisis on states taking more than their allotted share of electricity. The new power failure affected people across 20 of India's 28 states - more than the entire population of the European Union plus Turkey.

The blackout was unusual in its reach, stretching from the border with Myanmar in the northeast to the Pakistani border about 1,870 miles away. Its impact, however, was softened by Indians' familiarity with frequent blackouts and the widespread use of backup generators for major businesses and key facilities such as hospitals and airports. The outages came just a day after India's northern power grid collapsed for several hours. Indian officials managed to restore power several hours later, but at 1:05 p.m. Tuesday the northern grid collapsed again, said Shailendre Dubey, an official at the Uttar Pradesh Power Corp. in India's largest state. 
About the same time, the eastern grid failed and then the northeastern grid followed, energy officials in those regions said. The grids serve more than half India's population. In West Bengal, express trains and local electric trains were stopped at stations across the state of West Bengal on the eastern grid. Crowds of people thronged the stations, waiting for any transport to take them to their destinations.

 

About 600 million people lost power in India when the country’s northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day. The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left nearly everyone - the police, water utilities, private businesses and citizens - without electricity. Real prosperity flourishes on the natural gifts of nature, but when society depends on industrial complexes and huge factories, people have no time and no taste for any spiritual pursuits.

WHAT DO THE VEDIC TEACHINGS TELL US? 

Essentially, the more society depends on artificial necessities, the more vulnerable it becomes to artificial crises. Thus, civilization suffers and the economy slows whenever there is not enough oil, gas, electricity, or when the prices of such modern commodities become too high. When there is a loss of oil, gas, and other such necessities, or when there is an electrical blackout, so many activities are forced to stop. So many machines and appliances are but recent inventions, but now we have become so dependent on them that without them we think we can no longer function. Thus, people become trapped ever more deeply in the struggle to earn more money to buy more things that they are convinced they require to live happily and comfortably. In this way, they are tied and enslaved to a system whose goal is profits rather than really benefiting society.

Stephen Knapp (Śrīpad Nandanandana dasa) :
"Economics According to the Dharmic Way"
http://www.stephen-knapp.com/economics_according_to_the_vedic_way.htm
http://www.stephen-knapp.com  -  http://www.stephenknapp.info/

Published by dasavatara das - "Vedic Views on World News"
http://www.vedicviews-worldnews.blogspot.com.ar/