Kashmir : Winter’s Tale

With each passing day as we head deep into the winter and the cold gets severer, the people are confronted with a familiar predicament: the shortage of power supply. And which seems a bit odd considering PDP heads the new ruling coalition in the state. In its previous term in the government, the party had built its reputation for good governance, in part, by ensuring a reasonably sustained supply of electricity. When it first assumed power in 2002, the party made certain that the Valley receives an uninterrupted power supply through the holy Ramzan. What is more, the party set a higher benchmark by substantially improving the power supply through winters – which significantly also included the uninterrupted supply to the metered areas. And when the subsequent NC-Congress coalition failed to improve upon the performance, people nostalgically harked back to the PDP’s term in office.

Cut to winter 2015-16. PDP is again in power. But this has hardly meant improvement in the supply.  The electricity department has already issued notices on scheduled power cuts of three hours for metered areas, and eighth hours for non-metered ones. But in reality, the unscheduled power cuts supersede the scheduled cuts by additional five hours.

But this time PDP has sought to maintain a studied silence. If anything, this shows that the government doesnt think it can improve upon the situation. In fact, the government has already indicated it will not to operate 175 MW Pampore Gas Turbine citing high operation costs. Minister of State for Power, Muhammad Ashraf Mir said that the gas turbine “is not a cost-effective proposition for the government”. Commissioned at an enormous cost of Rs 220 crore, the  turbine—Phase 1 and 2, installed in 1989 and 1995   with a capacity of 75MW and 100MW respectively – used to overcome shortfall of electricity during winter months due to drastic reduction in the generation of electricity from the hydroelectric projects on account of the depleted discharge in rivers..

Now the inability to maintain a reasonable power supply has set off a familiar discourse. The power minister has blamed the people for hooking and pilferage of electricity. While it is nobody’s case to defend the power theft by people, this is not the real question at issue. The issue is who lets them do so in the first place and get away with it. And perhaps more important question is why PDD’s ground staff lets people pilfer power. The answer to this question is something we all know. If there is pilferage of power, it is the department of power that is responsible, not the people. However, what is shocking in the whole affair is how the government is staying off the debate. The Chief Minister and even the power minister can’t seem to care less. Perhaps, because they know, when they talk of the “good governance”, it doesn’t include the failure on the power front.

The fact is that power is a complex and very contentious subject in the state. And if anybody is responsible for messing it up or failing to provide curtailment-free electricity to the state for the past six decades, it is the successive state governments who have either overlooked the exploitation of state’s resources or many a time also colluded in this. Blaming people can therefore be termed only an abdication of the responsibility by this government to provide good governance and nothing else. 

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