Electric Dreams?

actually im born and bred New Delhi...

but i clearly see where ur going??....trying to coax south India to rebel eh?? u think that south India should form a separate country...lol...thinly veiled your comments are!

anyways, like i said there are more SEZ`s in Haryana, et all northern india btw.
and for a fact companies in the last 5 years have all indexed India and found that states like UP and Haryana are better suited to setup commercial complezes and centres than the south owing to many reasons.

since all YOU know and have heard about India is from the IT industry in the south, i dont think u are the best judge in the issue, so go read before u rant here.

OK, i don`t quite follow this turgid article.. scores of people went without electricity in a city of millions - sorry, what exactly is the problem?

Re: # 22 malaymishra123 bhai, zeemax bahi made a mistake. Baba jaanay do, Maaf kar do.

re: #18 you wrote

---

On to the issue
Mr taikonaut, the fact that southern India is what it is today is NOT because of its achievements ALONE.U shud know that more than half the people working in the IT industry in the south come from north India and a vast percentage is from Bihar and UP, etc. I am not denying that these states have pathetic physical infrastructure and ecnomy.

---

This is just an emotional response. May be you are from UP or Bihar, trying to defend the states at every cost. The facts are that Indian IT sector at home or abroad is dominated by the Southies. Big name companies and their top tier teams are mostly from the South.

Indian nationalism is useful only in way; it keeps Southies to carry all the BIMARU baggage. This extra baggage is the source of tremendous slowdown in the progress of the South.

It is time Southies kicked out BIMARU states. In the short run it may sound bad, but in the long run a more prosperous and more independent Southern India is good for Southies and good for the whole Subcontinent.

Good news is that the South is learning Western corporate rules for efficient operation and as a result they are moving away from the twin diseases spread by the Nehru: Nehruvian socialism and Nehruvian nationalism.

Namaste and Salaams.

is that why u directly went and attacked religion? so if a man criticises your country and your government, u would directly insult his religion? hmmmm...something to think about eh?

Mr Taikonaut was criticising on a State in India. I responded with some views over the state of developments. I criticised your country and u start on religion...

anyway, dont even bother talking about FDI, without trying half as hard we get investments in our country and the fact of you saying :

``Go and beg for your FDI. You need it more than Pak does because you have nothing else but to beg for tidbits``

umm...isnt your government going to the U.S. and elsewhere trying to market Pakistan and trying to woo more investments there?? Assuring everyone that Pakistan is a `safe` place to come and start businesses and to invest in so basically?. So dont give me the rhetoric that having FDI and other investments is a bad thing and u dont need it, atleast show a modern attitude and not of the middle ages. Because our companies are thriving today, mobile fones, tv, cable network etc are available freely and cheaply in India. There are more jobs in the market where the students are getting employed. Internet is much cheaper than Pakistan and has much more penetration in the public.Dont even get me started on these things.

Well, you have succeded then! no company is comming to invest in Pakistan!! JUST like you wanted im sure.

God bless you
And again
i hope the best for my country and yours but i also wish this time that no respected company shud ever hav the fortune of meeting you, shud they decide to enter the Pakistani market.

#19 by malaymishra123

Now that you have explained your position, that`s fine.

However, it was your following attack on my fellow Pak Taikonaut which prompted my post:

...unlike you people in pakistan who know only how to fire bloody AK 47`s and lob grenades. And as far as UP goes, i believe that the state of UP ALONE has more FDI than your ENTIRE worthless country! heh, i read somewhere the other day that u guys were HOPING and AIMING to get like 4 or 5 billion dollars FDI in your country by the end of the decade! pathetic!

Hmm ...

Next time, kindly mind your own business and stay out of Pak affairs. Go and beg for your FDI. You need it more than Pak does because you have nothing else but to beg for tidbits.

Karachi Exasperate Supply Company
Beyond the expectation Services
Playing with electricity, Playing with Karachites
Since last year entire Karachi, 11,970,000 Karachites where

busy in criticizing the KESC and government,
First thing, city population is growing like a rabbits plus vast number of immigration into the city.
Majority of karachites morning starts after 11.00 am, so you guys lose sunlight of 5 hours.
Do you know in which country wedding start in morning?
Pakistan, The Berrat and guests usually came at 12 or 1.00 am come please and Dulah & Dulan to go the bedroom at 4 and 5 am, suddenly electrically goes out and everyone curse KESC oh la la come on. Its good to have wedding in Afternoon Right ! everyone will have a Time

oh and fyi for zeemax

just because i am a Hindu defending my country does not mean that India is Hindu, India is as much Hindu as Islam, it is secular, India belongs to me as much as my Muslim friend. This ought to be clear from the vast number of Indian MP`s being Muslim. I celebrate eid-ul-fitr as much as my friend who brings savayin kheer to me. We have a Muslim president fpr god sakes whom we ALL adore. It shud be clear enough from that.If not then u are a FOOL. Muslims does not automatically mean Pakistanis, so we must all hate them.

MR Taikonaut
I have increased respect for you now for telling zeemax.
I could also go in a rant about Islam but that is not what i am against or about, i have great respect for Islam, as also the fact that one of my best friends is a Mulsim and a devout one at that!

On to the issue
Mr taikonaut, the fact that southern India is what it is today is NOT because of its achievements ALONE.U shud know that more than half the people working in the IT industry in the south come from north India and a vast percentage is from Bihar and UP, etc. I am not denying that these states have pathetic physical infrastructure and ecnomy.

They do and by-god they need imeediate help, (thankgod lalu has been removed now! and the new govt is trying really hard to make Bihar a much better state) but because of these things biharis are among the most intelligent types in India, practically half the civil service cadres in India are filled by Biharis. Like i said, they make up by leaving their land bihar and becoming great elsewhere. The south also has one of the most intelligent people, but my point is, that south alone would not have gotten half of what it has now without these states.

as also u shud know that Rajasthan has been removed from BIMARU states and others are in the process of doing so.States have become self-aware and realised their potential and are now desperately trying to improve their infrastructure and etc. Everytime a new foreign company wants to set up base, we have these states fighting like dogs so that the campus would be established in their state. This is unlike from the past where states like UP, MP, Orissa never bothered due to which every company went south. A balanced growth is now comming in the country.

We have an excellent PM who is trying to make things better for our country and people. Every passing year we see more and more Indians in the Forbes 500 list and Indian companies in the $Billion club. The ecnomy is buoyant and we are moving towards a better future. The military is trying to modernize and improvise, we are trying to resolve the border disputes with neighbours (we already have resolved some problems with China and the mood is in the upswing). We will become a great ecnonomic power in the next 50 years surpassing the GDP of Britain and France. Then the border disputers will become irrelevant as any state would rather be with India than any other country because of the oppurtunity and development it will get here(and i dont mean pakistan by that, bangladesh basically). The same thing that happened with US and Mexico.

But by no means are we done, we also have some HUGE astronomical problems: we have corruption in our system, that is thankfully on the decline with the Right To Information law comming in place and the media. We also have dengue , polio which we are trying to eradicate, we have insurgency and loads of other things.

So i hope the best for my country and yours.

Re: # 15 zeemax bhai, make fun of Bihar baikar or UP there UP.

However please respect the Hindu holy images.

Namaste and salaams.

Re: # 14 malayamishra bhai, let`s not pump too much hot air in Bihari baloon. Poor thang will rupture and explode.

Intellectual capital of India is in the South and not bihar baikar. Northies or BIMARU states are just adding cow-dung to the shoutie`s hard earned rupiya. Andhra is number 1 closely followed by other southern states. Bihar meray bhai is just stuck in the 2000 years old rut, fast breeder population, abject poverty, and total hopelessness.

Without Bihar and other BIMARU states, south would definitely be a fully developed region. Too bad they have to take the slow-poke Biharis along.

#13 harimau`s post clearly shows the frustration of southies.

Namaste and Salaams.

#14

So another holy hindu diety ... if there weren`t enough ... i.e. cows, excrement, monkeys, miscellaneous live-stock, six-armed black she-devils with skull necklaces, various inanimate objects, six-armed eunuchs with female faces and an elephant trunk for a nose ...

Now it is FDI ....

Good going .... hindus ... keep it up and you`ll find even more!

Mr harimau
if ur all for dropping nukes on your own country`s states, then u sure as hell are not proud of your nation:( .Before u drop nukes on west bengal, know that it has one of the highest FDI`s in the country, ahead of tamil nadu and other states. same goes for other states, if it was not for bihar, India would not have half the minerals it has now. So appreciate every state for what its got for its a combined effort of everything that our country is not like pakistan or afghanistan or iraq or somalia. It is also understandable that we have a long way to go to come at par with other developed nations.

Mr taikonaut or whatever the hell it is...

the biharis maybe reproducing at an exceptionally fast rate but dont forget that they are intellectual capitalists, one of the most intelligent people in the planet. They are mostly the ones who are going to U.S. and elsewhere and spreading India`s name and fame as being an intellectual country among Indians from other states!! so they might be reproducing fast, but atleast they got brains unlike you people in pakistan who know only how to fire bloody AK 47`s and lob grenades.

And as far as UP goes, i believe that the state of UP ALONE has more FDI than your ENTIRE worthless country! heh, i read somewhere the other day that u guys were HOPING and AIMING to get like 4 or 5 billion dollars FDI in your country by the end of the decade! pathetic!

as for us, theres no comparison b/w my country and yours, yours is a backward country while mine is an advanced developing nation poised for greater prosperity while yours will simply be declared a `failed-state` by the end of the decade. So before u go out talking trash about US, look in your own house.

Namaste, salaams.

Ref taikonaut #12

[Fast breeding? Must be taking about Bihari population in the land of your uncle Lallu Parsad Yadava.

p.s. instead of taking pot shots on your neighbors, do somthing about your country o fast breeding breeder!]

Hey, I am all for dropping a couple of nukes on UP, Bihar, Waste Bengal and a few places like that.

#10 and #11 harimau bhai, Indian electical system may be working in Chin-chin-aaee. However it simply sucks in the rest of Desh. Fast breeding? Must be taking about Bihari population in the land of your uncle Lallu Parsad Yadava.

p.s. instead of taking pot shots on your neighbors, do somthing about your country o fast breeding breeder!

Namaste, salaams.

Pakistan will have enough electric energy if it would shut down the thousands of centrifuges used to enrich uranium for bombs.

But then Pakistanis would rather eat grass than not have the Bomb.

So do without airconditioning.

In the meanwhile, I am in Chennai enjoying the benefits of electricity from the nuclear power plant 30 miles away. Yep, that is the place they are building the Fast Breeder Reactor. Which means we will have more plutonium for more Bombs.

Eat your heart out, Pakistanis!

Ref taikonaut #6

[For nuclear power, we need to move away from this false pride in nukes and move towards peaceful use of nuclear energy. Only then we can get funding and know how from the West.]

You can turn in all your nukes to Uncle Sam, hand over AQ Khan to the CIA, and you still won`t get any nuclear knowhow from the West.

The sin of selling centrifuges to Iran and bomb blueprints to Libya is too serious to be overlooked.

Ref kamath #2

[I don`t understand why the Pkistn government has n`t thought about generating energy from windmill farms and solar cells.]

They are busy trying to figure out how to harness the power of jinns.

#6 by taikonaut

You`re right. There`s no answer other than hydel power for Pakistan. Let`s look at the alternatives:

1) Thermal: Do we have oil? Can we control input cost? Current account deficit? Etc ..

2) Solar: Good for greenhouses but not much else.

3) Nuclear: Much too expensive to install, maintain and operate. Cost-of-doing business?

4) Windmills: It would take tens of thousands to power maybe just 1/10th of Karachi.

5) Hydel: Cheap. Indigenous free inputs. Pays for itself in a fraction of its useful life.

However, Pakistan`s energy problems are self-inflicted. After Tarbela, no serious attempt was made to build other mega dams before Tarbela`s useful life expired. During the first tenure of Nawaz Sharif, a water distribution accord was agreed between the provinces and implemented, and next step would have been agreement over dams. After Nawaz`s tenure was interrupted, the next Benazir government turned around and decided on thermal instead of hydel.

It was probably the most damaging decision in Pak history which not only raised the cost of doing business manifold (let alone hardship to domestic consumer) decreasing Pak`s competetiveness in export markets, but also sent the current account in permanent spiral due to massive oil import bills Vs decreasing export earnings.

An interesting clause in the 1994 Power Purchase Agreement of the Government of Pakistan with the IPPs is that the government guarantees to pay for 60% of installed capacity, whether it actually buys it or not. Since by the time all IPPs came on line the power was actually in excess of demand, WAPDA actually had to pay some IPPs 60% to keep their plants closed. Also, the plants were over-invoiced to $1 million per MW instead of the actual international cost of around $600,000 to recover the kickbacks through factoring-in the extra capital cost in the final tariffs paid by WAPDA.

It will be a great misfortune if still the Kalabagh Dam is not built.

Dear Mariam

Thanks for the article.

But, to be honest, I am feel more worried about the `DARKNESS` of the mind, soul and ideas in the country.

nhk

Electricity issue is a serious one. Thanks for bringing it to light (no pun intended!).

Let`s make certain that solar power is not so `hot` and wind power has no wind when it comes to large scale power generation. Both of them are good for meeting needs for doll houses and toy boxes.

Pakistan`s installed capacity is 18GW (that is Giga Watt) right now. We need another 20 GW in the near term. No sola or winda power can produce that much power. The obvious answer is to complete big dams (hated by smaller provinces), and go for at least 10-12 nuclear power stations with roughly 2,000MW each.

Both of these solutions need radical departure from our national mood. Smaller provinces must realize the need and allow mega dams.

For nuclear power, we need to move away from this false pride in nukes and move towards peaceful use of nuclear energy. Only then we can get funding and know how from the West.

Both of these solutions need big sacrifices. However we must change otherwise, the future of Karachi electricity will remain superb just like other big city squalors in our neighborhood.

Electricity issue is a serious one. Thanks for bringing it to light (no punn intended!).

Let`s make certain that solar power is not so `hot` and wind power has no wind when it comes to large scale power generation. Both of them are good for meeting needs for doll houses and toy boxes.

Pakistan`s installed capacity is 18GW (that is Giga Watt) right now. We need another 20 GW in the near term. No sola or winda power can produce that much power. The obvious answer is to complete big dams (hated by smaller provinces), and go for at least 10-12 nuclear power stations with roughly 2,000MW each.

Both of these solutions need radical departure from our national mood. Smaller provinces must realize the need and allow mega dams.

For nuclear power, we need to move away from this false pride in nukes and move towards peaceful use of nuclear energy. Only then we can get funding and know how from the West.

Both of these solutions need big sacrifices. However we must change otherwise, the future of Karachi electricity will remain superb just like other big city squalors in our neighborhood.

These are certainly the ground realities every Pakistani ``strategist`` must be thinking about. This whole Army-Mullah nexus and ``unfinished business of partition thing`` has completely hijacked the secular issues from the public agenda.
Now this Paki Army-Mullah Jehadi Agenda and the equally stupid fight on terror is obfuscating the issues of democracy and distributive justice within the third world and has simplified every thing into cosnpiracies between the faithful and the others.
The real issue in Pakistan now is the manner in which the General is ``Controlling`` the dictator`s license control raj. This guy and his coterie decides who can invest in Pakistan and when. His coterie is doling out lollipops of investment and other clearances to those businesses who support Musharaff and is slowly constricting those who do not follow his line.
This dictator is another slow POISON who has followed the path of Rent-Seeking from the businesses in return for support. He is a ruthless man who can stage dummy bomb attacks on himself in order to divert attention from his own rascal acts. I can predict that he would go down by the end of this year and Pakistan would be in a state of civil war!!

Dear Mariam Zaidi Sahib:

Great article, and very timely indeed. I have been involved with the power industry for a long time. As a matter of fact, recently there were some inquiries made by my friends in Karachi, regarding solar energy. The US estimated rate for solar powered energy is approximately $5 per watt. In the US a typical house has more power density than a typical house in Karachi. Also, there are all sorts of rebate programs being given by local utility companies to conserve energy.

In my understanding of the electric power situation for Karachi, there are several issues that the authorities could work on. One is the massive rebate program. Let`s face it, for solar energy of 1,000 Watt installed called in Karachi would be approximately $50,000.

I would be interested in reading other comments, regarding this issue.

Respectfully submitted,

I don`t understand why the Pkistn government has n`t thought about generating energy from windmill farms and solar cells. This may not relieve people all the energy requirements but definitely will help.

In India these are becoming popular in some states. In one of the southern states, the govt subsidizes cost for installation of solar cell panel on any house. It works wonders even if you have just 100 watts, it works wonders and enables litle light in the house and children can read and write.

These are the burning issues. Instead of attacking them with religious fervour, the the Big General seems to be more interesretd in rubbing shoulders with other statesmaen, promoting his book , travelling abroad for long stretches of time and diverting money to the F16 planes.

That is a pity and it can have far reaching consequences.

Kamath

Great article!