Blackout Leaves 300M Without Power in India | Hacker News Reader

Blackout Leaves 300M Without Power in India

cnbc.com

31 pointscodegeek16 comments

That'd be like the entire USA being without power. Wow, it puts India's size into perspective.

"We'll find out the reason and see that such kind of things are avoided in the future" is not exactly a reassuring quote from the head of India's Power Grid Corporation.

What would you like him to say, given that he probably does not know the reason at this time?

"I do not have all the answers as to how the failure occurred but I do know that we cannot simply band-aid over what ever problem is found. The root of the problem is not what part of the system failed today but the system itself. "

"Instead of delivering essential services to expand business and strengthen the private sector we have unfortunately created a power delivery system that favors only the constituencies of the political parties in our states. Power regulations are fragmented and compliance is difficult. We must urgently pursue reform in the same way that we reformed the license raj back in 1994. We must not let this crises be an excuse for inaction. The people of India deserve more. We must tap into foreign investment and our politicians must not fear change and reform."

Oh, so instead of a factual engineering update, you want to see him play politics. Gotcha.

"Here's what caused the issue and here's our plan to fix it."

http://biolitestove.com/homestove comes to mind. Not a complete solution, of course, but any means of generating electricity is handy in such situations.

No doubt this was an inconvenience to people trying to get to work on the metro, and the number affected (300 million) is staggering, but all the same:

About 40 percent of Indians, or 500 million people, lack electricity.

I think it's funny that the guy is stressing not being able to get to his programming job, when the offices are probably without power any way.

Well, most IT offices have generators there..

40% do lack electricity but that does not mean all live without power. The problem in India is that ability to produce enough electricity for all. Hence, people who can afford use generators etc. which nowadays are not that expensive for middle class.

No Big deal actually.

In other news: Quality of software rises to new heights.

Probably more likely to impact customer service calls here in the US.

I see the joke you're making, but if you want to actually apply that humorous scenario to reality, what you have is a week of lost work, probably without any adjustment to the actual delivery date.

So, quality of software is gonna plummet in two weeks.

I did not expect to see such a cliched and stereotyped attempt at xenophobic humour being the top comment on HN. This is sad, really.

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