Bangalore has always had power problems ever since I started visited it, but this time the situation seems to be much worse than ever.

Every day, the electricity goes off for at least five hours, and although we have a back-up power supply supported by a huge array of car batteries we have to be very careful in how we use it to make sure we can remain operational all day, such as turning off the air conditioning, using laptops rather than desktops wherever possible, and in extreme cases even turning out the lights. It can be a surreal experience typing away on your laptop in semi-darkness. 

All these measures help us make it through the day, but they are hardly conducive to maximum productivity. I just wonder how much India loses in year as a result of power cuts; the sum must be prohibitively expensive.

There are a myriad of reasons why not just Bangalore but the whole of India suffers from such serious power problems, but the most important one is quite simple: investment in power generation and transmission capacity is nowhere near sufficient to support India’s fast-growing economy and population.

And the bad news is that the situation is going to get a lot worse before it starts to get better as India’s demand for power continues to grow faster than its ability to add new capacity.

I wish I had some answers to this problem, but right now just about the only thing I can do is go out and buy some more car batteries….