दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

I am not one who will bother if Oprah Winfrey makes some more nonsensical remarks about India and Indians to entertain her audience. It is obviously clear that the media in US prefer publishing hot stories from India. Americans may be relishing it and finding it something with difference. However, the same media was hardly enthusiastic enough about the terrorist like attack by a crazy person in Wisconsin on innocent persons.

The media covered the India’s world’s worst black out extensively. Why did it cover so well? Perhaps it was to forewarn its own system to see that being a democracy, the similar power outages may also happen in US too. Additionally, it might be some sort of advisory for its own entrepreneurs going to India for setting up business.

However, I find many of the information might help those in power, the policy makers and administrators, to take some preventive steps well in time.

Washington Post provides two graphs and discusses ‘what the blackouts might mean for the future economic prospects of the world’s second most-populous country’ However, while reporting it also provides the reason behind it. “That may be partly a consequence of the fact that the country has raced to build a truly jaw-dropping amount of infrastructure in the past few decades. Twenty years ago, just 42 percent of India’s households had electricity. Today, that’s up to 66 percent. (That still, however, leaves about 400 million people without power.)” American companies particularly those in consulting in power, will find good prospect for getting some attractive revenue through right strategies.

Star Tribune provides a hoary situation: “passengers on Delhi’s metro, one of India’s spiffiest bits of infrastructure and a symbol of its modernization, felt their trains grind to a halt, some of them deep beneath India’s capital. They had to be evacuated.”

USA Today story is more spicy for its reader: “India’s power sector is lousy with thieves. As much as 40% of the power generated in India is not paid for. In the most recent fiscal year, utilities lost an estimated 1.07 rupees (about 2 cents) per kilowatt hour, up 40% since fiscal 1999.”

Wall Street Journal also expressed its concern: “India’s severe power blackout earlier this week alerted the world to the depths of the country’s energy deficit. But will it jolt New Delhi into action?” However I couldn’t understand why it illustrated the report with a photograph of ‘a gardener mowing the grass while the caretaker refills the generator with diesel in a residence in New Delhi’.

Interestingly, Forbes warning was more futuristic: “The energy challenges India and China face today, are being mirrored across the developing world. They all have the same three inconvenient truths to ponder, just as the rich world needs to work out the inconvenient consequences that derive from economic growth and increased emissions. Pretending this link doesn’t exist, is only going make matters inexorably worse.”

And all these reports were somewhere perhaps meant for the domestic consumption in USA as mentioned in the report of firstpost.com from Washington: “India’s historic blackout has not only prompted inevitable calls from the United States for much needed reforms in India’s energy sector, but also a great deal of introspection about America’s own ageing infrastructure.”

We in Cary had experienced a power outage for few hours just few days ago because of a storm.

However, while surfing so extensively, I realized that the websites of American media is far better in serving its customers like me without presenting any interferences from various pop-ups and annoying ads that present a very greedy and poor image of Indian media in designing its websites.