About 10% of the world was without power when a massive blackout hit India this week. Power has mostly been restored, and so has the hubris of the officials responsible. From the WaPo: "Asked to rate his performance as India’s power minister, Sushilkumar Shinde responded emphatically Wednesday: 'Excellent,' he declared with a confident smile and a wave of his hand." Veerappa Moily, who replaced Shinde in the Power Ministry after a cabinet reshuffle, was equally ready to deny blame. “We are very proud," Moily told the Post. "We have an excellent system. Maybe there were certain localized features.” (Washington Post)

  • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1200153498 Garett Trietsch
  • fuzzyfuzzyfungus

    Well, the Indian subcontinent is a ‘location’, so I suppose that the failures were localized, in a sense…

  • Brainspore

    “I don’t even understand the question! As you can see, we’ve all remained in pow– oh… you meant electrical power. Yeah, that system is fucked.”

  • Justin Kumpf

    My understanding is that about 2 billion people are without power everyday, so to say that 10% were without it… is to understate things a bit.

  • eldritch

    I think people need some perspective here. A mass blackout occured, affecting 10% of the world.

    And they fixed it in TWO DAYS.

    Large, complicated systems fail. There’s no preventing that. You can reduce the rate of occurance and mitigate the level seriousness, but failures are inevitable. And I think India has shown they possess a remarkable ability to rapidly and intelligently deal with such failures when they do occur, and the rest of the world is trying to twist it into some sort of absurd third world cockup, which is patently untrue.

    • Brainspore

      I’m having a difficult time imagining a scenario in which the entire population of the United States was left without power for two days and the occurrence wasn’t universally derided as a huge cockup. Remember the Northeast blackout of 2003?

      • Osloianer

         The one they fixed in 16 hours, as opposed to two days?

        • Brainspore

          Yes, that one. Which was universally derided as a huge cockup. One that cost some people their lives.

          Then, as now, the question on most minds isn’t “how could a system this big fail?” It’s “how could such a critical system be built without failsafes to prevent such a widespread failure?”

    • http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

      The scandal isn’t the time required for a  fix . . . it is that the outages had gotten that big in the first place.

      In a properly run grid, the outages would have been localized.

      And it IS a third-world cockup. Or to be more PC, the problems were due to the nature of a developing country plagued by income inequality and corruption.

      The management of the grid in India is subject to corruption, with some areas getting more power due to political influence. The infrastructure is brittle and under-funded because wealthy people don’t rely on it . . . they have generators in their homes. Desperately poor people tap into the lines for “free” electricity.

      • EH

        Most populous democracy in the world!

    • Gavin Smith

      Great perspective check eldritch. I think it is very possible to be at the helm for a major failure and be doing a very good job. Scapegoating officials for system failures is some kind of hold over from more mystical times. Negligence does not always lead to failure and failure does not always indicate negligence. 

  • Rotwang

    Heck of a job, Brown-ji!

    • EH

      I think “Shinde” might rhyme as well, and without the ethnic overtone.

      • Moriarty

        “Shinde” being of completely ambiguous ethnicity?

        • EH

          Well, it’s the guy’s actual name.

  • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

    quick question. Have you tried turning it off and on again?

    • Moriarty

      Is that not what a blackout is?

      Although now that you mention it, I can see this whole thing being a prank by a disgruntled customer of one too many tech support calls to India. “Why don’t YOU try turning it off and on again? [maniacal laughter]“

      • http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki

         No, that’s forcing an unexpected reboot.
        Now on the other hand, if you were to turn it off, wait a day or two, then turn it on. That would be a blackout.