Living in the so-called Silicon Valley of India, Bangalore, and watching the proceedings in the past few weeks, its hard not to react. The lack of statistical data may make this post look like an outburst but its the reality. There are two events happening here, in tandem. The first one is supposed to be a big event, or a campaign which is expected to lead to series of events. The government of Karnataka is driving it and is called "Advantage Karnataka". This seems to be a borrowed idea, earlier executed by another BJP stronghold, industrial state of Gujarat, which was then called "Vibrant Gujarat". This basically tries to project Karnataka as an investment destination.
The second event is the power crisis in the state, which is covered up totally in the campaign, as any campaign would be. Most parts of Bangalore is experiencing around 4 hours of power shutdown everyday and sometimes more. Mostly, during daytime - thanks to them as a householder, we get some sleep after all. But industries, who are under real stress, would be cursing them due to the extra operational cost. Most IT companies, which renders the tag of "Silicon Valley" to Bangalore are running with Diesel Generators, which is a huge and unnecessary burden for them. There are so many other sectors which gets affected due to this lack of power supply like agriculture, manufacturing and education, which I did not mention due to lack of information.
It looks funny to me to see this campaign, which boasts of many things, one of which being "Good infrastructure". Does lack of power still be termed as "Good infrastructure"? With whatever basic understanding I have, with which I can not make any administrative decisions at such high level, I guess electricity is one of the basic needs to run an industry. I am sure that some or the other investor, would raise this issue in each of these meetings and I am more than sure that the government (politicians here) has convincing and pre-planned answers prepared by the Administrative Babus and Execution Engineers. More than those answers, they would be satisfied with false promises and subsidies.
Criticism about the government and its functioning never ends and the government never bothers it, as well. Leaving criticism, on the constructive side, I wonder, how such an enormous power demand is being met by the US and other European nations. These countries' power demand is multi-fold higher than what Karnataka (or India as a whole) is facing. What I am given to know, even in the US, most of the demand is satisfied by thermal power generation, which is same in Karnataka, equally backed up with hydel power generation. Why don't the government take these nation's power generation as a model to work on, as it tries to make Vibrant Gujarat its model for it Advantage Karnataka campaign. Just by these campaigns, it can not be successful in bringing in the real investment. It might succeed with a few initial investments, by hiding or manipulating the facts. But the truth will surface out soon which will trigger unhappiness among the investors, who in turn will campaign not to invest in the state. Real investment is a continuous process, which will not happen with this infrastructure.
I think the government was too busy in imitating Gujarat's campaign, that it forgot to investigate more on power demand and supply scenario in that industrialised state. I had hardly come across power shortages and power cuts in Gujarat when I lived there and it is still being agreed as a fact by my friends who live there.
Note: I tried to find some statistical data, with not too many success. One of the informative web pages I came across during this process is quoted below. Please take time to read that for a little better numerical data, though not from any validated sources.
http://www.praja.in/en/blog/bhamyshenoy/2010/02/08/karnataka-power-crisis-need-new-thinking
