Light up our world
- Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial :: January 13, 2012 -

The world today has become so dependent on electric power that life has become unimaginable without it, except in a place called Manipur.

While the rest of the world go about their lives, be it in entertainment, business or academic pursuit with the press of a button or the click of a mouse, those of us living in this part of world wait eagerly with a prayer on our lips for our daily quota of two/three hours of power supply.

As far as the power scenario goes, there is no state like Manipur.

While in other states load shedding is an exception and even in those states which struggle to meet the demand, the power outage last for barely an hour or so, here it is the other way round with power supply lasting for some few hours and the greater part of the day and almost the whole night without power supply.

And the situation is becoming even more acute these past few days. Winter has always been a tough period for Manipur as far as power supply goes.

There is less generation of power from the Loktak Hydro Project because of the shortfall in the water available, consequently leading to a decrease in the state's share during this period.

But this time around, the people of the state have been much worse hit because of various factors coming together.

At present, there is huge gap between the demand and supply of electric power in the state, while there is a demand for 75 MW during daytime, it has only 29.2 MW at its disposal while 170 MW is needed during night time, only 71 MW is available between 5 pm to 7 pm and 90 MW is available.

Out of these certain MW has been dedicated for election purposes, further curtailing the power available to the public. On top of this, there is perpetual technical snags and breakdowns of sub-stations, transformers and power lines.

Given all these, the cup of woes for the consumers of the state is full. People have been told for years now that such and such power projects in the state and in neighbouring states are coming up and once they are commissioned power shortage in the state will be a thing of past.

But these promises have been long in coming and there is no likelihood of delivering on these promises in the near future. In the meantime, what is urgently needed is to make power available to the people, the lay consumers at all cost for at least 6 to 7 hours during the day and for an equal number of hours during the night.

It is true that the revenue collection from the consumers is not commensurate with the amount spent on the purchase of electricity to meet the demand, falling far too short.

While there is a need for rigorous bill collection drive as was pursued some time back during last year, checking power theft and illegal connection to improve the overall power scenario in the state, the state government need to do more to make power available to the people.

There is little likelihood of the revenue collection covering the cost of purchasing electricity even if all the consumers of the state clear all their dues.

The state government should subsidize the shortfall by exploring ways to finance it either on its own or with support from the centre.

This is the only sensible step at the moment; the people of the state cannot wait till eternity for some light in their dark lives. The sooner it is done, the better.