The country is trying to keep its lights turned on and its insatiable demand for energy is forcing it to look abroad for help. Ben Doherty reports from Delhi.
Recently in Delhi, a group of India's top energy experts, businessmen and bureaucrats met in a too-large, brightly-lit hotel conference room to discuss the country's problems.
Standing at the podium, flanked by two massive video screens and lit by the additional glare of a bank of spotlights, the president of the India Energy Forum, P.S. Bami, told delegates, ''We are in an energy crisis.''
''How do we meet this challenge … this is the big question.''
India's problem is simple but not simply fixed.
There is, simply, not enough power to go around.
Rolling blackouts, power shedding because demand outstrips supply, are commonplace across the country. India often needs 10 per cent more electricity than the country can produce, the Central Electricity Authority says.
Even in the capital, in the garage or backyard of most homes sits a generator, which is used to ride out the inevitable cuts. (During the peak of summer demand, the Herald office backup rumbles into life three or four times a day.)
Across the country, 40 per cent of Indians get electricity for fewer than 12 hours a day.
And still the country needs more.