Why India's Massive Power Outages Get Fixed More Quickly Than
D.C.'s In India, a massive power outage has left an estimated
670 million people – 10 percent of the world's population –
without power. It's the second outage affecting hundreds of
millions of people within just two days, events that are far and
away the largest power outages ever seen. And yet, within hours,
the problems had mostly been solved. When the first outage hit
on Monday, it was being called the biggest power outage to occur
in India in about a decade. Not history. Not the last 50 years.
But just over the last 10 years or so. That a cataclysmic power
outage could happen so frequently is a pretty damning reality
for the public utilities of India. And, indeed, power outages
are common in India, though they're typically much smaller. On
Tuesday, the northern grid collapsed, cutting power for hundreds
of millions of people, grinding to a halt activity in places as
densely populated as New Delhi. But despite the relative
frequency of such lar