So, here we are again. Back at the same old place. In retrospect, however, it seems reasonable to conclude that we never left the place, in the first place. As was the case so many decades ago, even today we are still left dancing in the dark. Or protesting on the streets. That was how on Monday morning a group of mothers from three localities in Dimapur reacted to our state government’s failure to provide power supply for five consecutive days. Our power department is a joke that nobody, at least among the members of the public, finds funny.
Really, it’s the same old joke repeated every year. For decades. The cycle is so well established that it could be repeated purely on muscle memory. The government cracks the same old joke and, in response, the people either burn the house down or take their angst to the streets. The lessons, it would appear, are not worth being learnt at all.
It was only in July this year that the Association of Power Engineers of Nagaland had gone on record saying that the power situation in the state would get only worse. The caution was accompanied by the concern that the department of Power was allocated a meagre budget of Rs 7.11 crore against the department’s total projected requirement of Rs 140.00 crore for the current financial year. The warning was that with the meagre budget, the department of Power would not be in a position to restore power supply in the eventuality of major breakdown of machinery and equipment. And that, the worsening situation of power interruptions due to power line failures and transformer breakdowns were imminent.
To address the existing requirement, the engineers had emphasized on the ‘critical need’ for the state government to provide adequate fund under the State Annual Plans. Clearly, this has not happened. Not even contingency measures. According to the annual administrative report of the department of power (2015-16), the peak demand of the state currently stands “restricted” at 145 MW. This, if we really think about it, is not really high – especially in comparison to other neighbouring states. It is simply that our government – successive governments – have failed to dig deeper.
It has been commonly attributed that poor revenue collection is one of the reasons behind the government’s inability to do proper and timely maintenance of machineries. On the flipside, Mokokchung district is said to have the best revenue collection record in the state. So it will be really interesting to try and find out what makes it work in Mokokchung, and replicate it in the rest of the districts. For now, the engineers have made it crystal clear. The switch is not located on their side of the room. It is with the policymakers – which to be quite brutal, is not always good news. From the present situation, we can only conclude that our policymakers cannot locate the switch in the dark.
So for now, we are stuck with the same old and outdated joke. This will continue unless someone locate the switch in the corridors of power and lead us out from darkness to light.
