Indian blackout: A bitter fruit of neglect of livelihood
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E-mail People's Daily, August 6, 2012
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The Indian blackout is a clear alarm that what serious consequences can a country face if it doesn’t pay attention to people's livelihood.
At about 1 p.m. July 30 the three major electricity distributors of India successively paralyzed and the electricity supply was cut in more than half of the country. 670 million people were affected by this large-scale power failure which was the most serious of India in recent 11 years.
The India blackout was caused by the increasing electricity demand driven by the rapid economic development while the power generation equipment and the power supply circuit are out of date resulting in Indian power-supply system’s failure which can’t meet the country’s increasing demand.
In fact, Indian poor electricity supply and other infrastructures are the results of its mixed-economy system in which the public and private economy coexist. India has put unbalanced emphasis on the development of its industry, especially heavy industry, leading to the inconsistent development between industry and agriculture, unreasonable industrial structure as well as the under-investment in its infrastructure including its power supply.
Besides, the Indian government exercises all kinds of restrictions on its market mechanism, such as dual price and maximum price limits, disrupting the normal function of the market mechanism. The excessive intervention of Indian government inevitably results in corruption and serious polarity. Some Indian officials acknowledged half of the governmental funds allocated to infrastructure construction has been embezzled by officials at different levels.
Though India implemented the policy of opening up to the outside world in 1991, in order to protect its domestic industry, India implements restrict rules on foreign direct investment. India often limits foreign access to its home market under excuse of security clearance, restrictions on holding ratio and bans on tenders, which also limit the economic development of India, thus the improvement of India’s infrastructure lacks dynamic.
The planned economy and heavy industry have strayed too far from people’s livelihood, and corruption, external woes and internal tensions destroyed the people’s livelihood. Due to the great deficiency in livelihood economy the infrastructures such as electricity lack the dynamic to improve. This blackout is a clear alarm.
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