Gurgaon: Electricity Crisis Hobbles an India....

GURGAON, India — This suburb south of New Delhi is where the fruits of 
India’s economic advance are on full display: sprawling malls, 
skyscrapers housing India’s acclaimed software companies, condominiums 
with names as fanciful as Nirvana Country.

But this fashionable address of the new India is also a portrait of 
ambition bumping up against reality, namely an electricity crisis that 
represents one of the major hurdles to India’s ability to hoist itself 
into the front ranks of the global economy.

Look up at the tops of buildings, and on any given day, you are likely 
to find three, four or six smokestacks poking out of each, blowing 
gray-black plumes into the clouds. If the smokestacks are being used, it 
means the power is off and the building — whether bright new mall, 
condominium or office — is probably being powered by diesel-fed generators.

This being India, a country of more than one billion people, the scale 
is staggering. In just one case, Tata Consultancy Services, a technology 
company, maintains five giant generators, along with a nearly 
5,300-gallon tank of diesel fuel underground, as if it were a gasoline 
station.


cont'd....
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/world/asia/21india.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin