The limits of power

There are metaphorical graveyards full of government officials who over the years have promised an end to the electricity crisis. Year on year there are earnest assertions that all will be resolved by ‘X’ date and the lights will be on for most people 24/7 — rural communities excepted. Time after time the powers that be failed to put the power in the wires, and the people of Pakistan roast in the heat of summer, fuming that once again the powerful are revealed as powerless.

It is now the turn of the prime minister no less to express his own anger and frustration at a meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Energy on Tuesday 18^th April. Official admissions of getting it wrong are as rare as hen’s teeth, but such is the magnitude of the power shortfall that the government had little choice but to acknowledge reality and the PM “expressed annoyance over the laxity by the authorities concerned for not taking pre-emptive measures to cope with load-shedding…” — as well he might but his words will be wasted as have been the words of others before him.

Ministry officials scrambled for explanations — the rise in temperatures (how surprising) and the non-availability of water in the dams being but two — which were promptly and rightly rubbished by the PM. The fact that ‘officials’ had incorrectly briefed the PM as to the shortfall can have done nothing for his temper either, leading him to believe that the shortfall was 2,500MW where in reality it was 7,200MW. A clumsy attempt to dodge a bullet or two.

With circular debt reaching epic levels, no sign of rain to fill the silted reservoirs and an old and decrepit generation and distribution infrastructure; power outages is going to be an increasingly smelly albatross around the neck of the government right up to next year’s election. With the shortfall exceeding that when the PML-N came to power four years ago power has become their nemesis, and all political considerations aside could well be the single largest determinant when it comes to the opening of the polling booths in 2018 — and power is an illusion in so many ways.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 20^th, 2017.

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