Our Awful Situation

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India feels the heat as thousands riot over power cuts

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 5th, 2008

Lights out, er, on?

Thousands of people, many wearing only underwear, rioted across northern India yesterday over power cuts that have left millions without electricity or water, highlighting the yawning gap between the country’s superpower aspirations and realities on the ground.

The violence underlined growing public frustration at the Government’s failure to improve the basic infrastructure, especially electricity and water supplies, despite an unprecedented economic boom.

The Government has pledged to provide “power for all” by 2012, but analysts say that it will struggle to keep up with demand as the middle class sates its appetite for electronic goods and larger homes.

While India’s economy has grown at an average of 8 per cent for the past four years, enriching a consumer class of 50-60 million people, half of the billion-plus population are not even connected to the electricity network. Those who are rely on voltage stabilisers, inverters (large batteries) and diesel-powered generators. The power minister in Uttar Pradesh predicted that the energy crisis would last for at least two more years.

Masters of the world no more

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 11th, 2008

While the writer of this article fails to understand the inter-connectivity of the global economy he presents an interesting piece nonetheless:

The truth is that we are masters of the world no more.

The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns - it is a reality that is beginning to have a huge impact on our daily lives.

What would those Victorian masters of old have made of the fact that Chinese security men were on the streets of London this week, ordering our own police about and fighting running battles with British protesters while bewildered athletes carried the Olympic torch on its relay through the capital?

It was a brazen display of how confident China has become of its new place in the world, just as the British Government’s failure to take a firm stand on Chinese abuses of human rights shows how craven we have become.

The dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund this week that the West now faces the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, while the Asian economies are still powering ahead, simply underlines our vulnerability in this new world order.

The desperately weakened American dollar appears to be on the verge of losing its global dominance, in the same way as sterling lost it a lifetime ago.

The credit crunch has brought home to all of us in Britain how over-reliant our country has become on financial services. Meanwhile, the loss of our manufacturing industries to Asia continues unabated.

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