A city of darkness

Living in the 21st century we are proud to call ourselves modern. And it is quite true too, if not in any other sense then at least technologically. We have things at our disposal which would have made even the most affluent middle age monarch's eyes pop out his head. Any one of them would have given half of her empire for say, a cooling device like refrigerator. Or a television set. But then these things, along with many other modern marvels, would have been useless to them because they didn't have electricity, just like any other Jammu resident today.  Though easily in capacity to buy most of the present day technological paraphernalia, owning to its dependence on electricity, a rare commodity in Jammu, makes it useless for them.

What is one to do with a sleek television set with a DTH setup if there is no power? A dead air conditioner in the biting heat can never support a slowly rotating fan running on precious inverter power.

With more than ten hours of power cuts, Jammu is virtually run on private sources of electricity. Invertors, electricity generators are things you will rarely not find in anyone's house. The absence of electricity is so prominent that the government's service seems a sheer nothing. Waste of effort, more or less. It makes one inevitably think about the futility of electricity bills.The problem is not limited to a certain area and has all of Jammu in its ambit.

The residents of the city are losing their calm, anyone who sits in her bedroom sweating while the air conditioner remains silent due to a power cut is bound to feel so. While the country has moved into modern times it seems that Jammu is still stuck somewhere in the past centuries .

While many maintain and believe that the discrimination against the Jammu region by the state government is the sole reason for the problem it cannot be denied that the condition improves with the coming of the government into this part during winters. Then could  it be that the state wants to limit its resources to itself, while being callous to the needs of the people? The situation raises unavoidable questions on the role of government in the state, is it a facilitator or is it the sole benefactor of the projects raised by taxing the hard earned resources of the people? It also points to the problem of energy transmission and distribution.

But there is a more logical reason to this too, the deficit city faces has mostly been over 500 MW, these days looming around some 600MW. The situation looks quite ironic as the state is one among those which have a high hydropower potential, in this case, almost 20,000 MW, which can easily satiate the need of the entire city even if realized half, but is allowed to go to waste.

While the future seems promising in the above statics, it is solely dependent on the government to make it come true. Its not that the city is being deprived of power for some inevitable reason, it's just a question of proper effort and some sincere work to bring light to Jammu's darkness.