When everything depends on a higher power

Load shedding and power failures were once a fact of life in many parts of India, occurring more frequently during summer, just when fans and coolers, not to mention chilled beverages and other cooling options, were most needed. Winter without electricity was not that much of a bane except in the mountainous regions. There groans of “Ufff, not again!” and irate calls were made to the local electricity board that were mostly never answered. But life went on.No schools, colleges or offices stopped functioning, no traffic came to a grinding halt, trains ran no tardier than normal, airports also did not shut down, shoppers were not unable to choose their wares or pay for them, banks carried on functioning in their trademark slothful way. At home, it was work as usual too with meals being cooked, clothes and utensils washed and dried, and rooms swept and swabbed, quite unhindered by the lack of electricity.

The panic and chaos in Spain and Portugal when the peninsula’s entire electricity grid tripped last Monday brought back memories of being “powerless” in India. According to a rattled western media, that near-total outage, “one of the worst ever in Europe,” began just after mid-day and lasted till late evening, disrupting traffic, business, cellular communication, critical infrastructure and more. It was likened to going back to the Dark Ages by distraught people.

Indians of my generation and older would draw one inescapable conclusion from it: electricity is now the most powerful creation on Earth. We are beholden to it in the guise of progress, and increasingly unable to function without it. What was once achieved by elbow grease and brain power has been outsourced to machines, from appliances to computers, and our own bodies are now unwilling to be discomfited in any way.

Today, many around the world including urban Indians, cannot imagine work without computers, household chores without appliances, offices without air-conditioning, shopping without UPI or card machines, communication without mobile phones. And for some, life itself is now impossible without the internet. Moreover, the shift to ‘clean’ energy has also taken the edge off any guilty feelings about relying on electricity-dependent technology.

No one would advocate returning to the bad old days of load shedding or power failure-induced self-reliance, of course. But the widespread impact of the absence of electricity should at least prompt some introspection about the way we live and work today. Vertical housing has made elevators essential, work-from-home needs computers and Wi-Fi, most transport modes depend on electricity in some way, sport and entertainment are largely dependent on it too.Even in urban India, very few homes and offices today have provision for natural cross ventilation, there is an aspirational push for electric and electronic gadgets, landline phones have disappeared, and ‘games’ without screens and keyboards are almost inconceivable for those below 35. Digitisation has also made electricity central to the operations of everything from government departments, courts and banking to hospitals, education and business.Now with AI, even more aspects of human existence will be ceded to a “power-hungry” creation. So the fallout of power failures will be more catastrophic in future. Aggrandising entities will not have to defeat armies to conquer; just crippling power sources will be enough. Some have blamed cyberattacks for the Iberian grid failure, others point to temperature fluctuations. Either way, it has revealed our rising vulnerability. Some give up their high-tech lives to ‘go back to nature’ and get admiring press coverage. However, the expansion of electricity in our world cannot be stopped. Instead, billions will be spent to prevent breakdowns; maybe one day everything will draw and store energy directly from the sun. But crises will still happen. What then? But one aspect of Monday’s outage is even more puzzling. Why were panicking Iberians stocking up on toilet paper?