Photo: Still from “Powerless”
Even in places in India where the grid extends, it can’t always be counted on.
In Kanpur, India, electricity shortages have brought about police cases, raid squads, and public anger. The 2013 film Powerless (Katiyabaaz)artfully tells the story of several characters caught in the complicated landscape of electricity shortages in the city of Kanpur and the obstacles that stymie addressing this problem. It also highlights some of the shortcomings of the grid in India, and leaves open a space for solutions needed -- one distributed clean energy is poised to fill.
For Fahad Mustafa, one of the co-directors of the film, Kanpur has personal relevance as the city of his birth. He noted, “[Kanpur] was a big industrial city, and now it’s crippled by lack of basic infrastructure.”
Today, Kanpur has a population of three million and experiences power outages that last up to 12-15 hours per day. To put that into perspective, when we hear of the 400 million people lacking energy access in India, this doesn’t include the millions in cities like Kanpur who are under-electrified. The filmmakers wanted to avoid presenting an exotic story in a rural setting, and instead depict a story in a landscape familiar to most viewers: a city. It is an important reminder that the grid often under-serves cities, and, ironically, is usually the first place beyond the grid companies find customers. It’s just another place where clean energy has something valuable to add.
In Kanpur, the inconsistent power supply has significant consequences for residents. For example, hospitals must turn away treatable patients because they are unsure whether they will have consistent energy during an operation. Power outages also significantly affect the work of leather factory workers and have forced them to rely on diesel energy generators, which have negative side effects to health and local air quality.
In other words, even those who pay for electricity access from the grid experience unreliable service in Kanpur.
Powerless tells a story about electricity theft and the people engaged in the dangerous work of setting up illegal connections. In Powerless, we also meet the new managing director of Kanpur’s main utility company, Ritu Maheshwari, who launched a campaign to get people to pay their electricity bills and dispatched raid squads and disconnection teams to eliminate illegal connections. After all, electricity theft is estimated to contribute to approximately 30 percent of a utility company’s budget shortfall of 20 billion rupees (more than U.S. $300 million). Illegal connections also mean that paying customers experience more outages than they would otherwise because of the additional demands on the grid.
Though Maheshwari is well-intentioned, her campaign is met with rage by those involved in the illegal electricity trade.To them, the utility company is pitting a war against those most in need of power. People consuming electricity illegally are, by-and-large, low-income and unable to justify spending money on electricity bills. Without an affordable basic energy option, many see electricity theft as a better alternative than candles or kerosene lamps.
In the film, the personal risks people bear through electricity theft, as well as scenes of people praying for light and fights being started with the utility company, show how desperate people are for power. Anecdotally, it has also been said that some large companies have been known to avoid paying energy bills with no consequence from the government.
The film does an outstanding job depicting the complex landscape of energy issues in Kanpur. But a path forward is intentionally left open.
Ultimately, there are infrastructure and governance problems in Kanpur that need to be addressed, but there is also a supply shortage in Kanpur. As Fahad noted in our interview, “There has been no significant new power project in past 22 years in Uttar Pradesh [the state which Kanpur is located]. There’s a power plant in Uttar Pradesh that’s barely able to meet demand requirements. There’s not enough investment into sustainable energy.”
Investment in sustainable energy is an important part of the solution to Kanpur’s power outages. And there are positive signs: in Kanpur, the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology has just installed a 50-kilowatt solar power plant. While there is no silver bullet for the electricity challenges in Kanpur, adding more solar energy supply to the system could certainly ameliorate some of the problems of power outages. And the speed of deployment of solar is much faster than conventional energy.
More broadly in India, we’re seeing signs that investors are taking note and showing their interested in the opportunity. For example, investments in solar in India are rumored from Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs and others, and investments have been announced from the U.S. Export-Import Bank. Prime Minister Modi has set ambitious goals for solar in the country, which includes significant support for solar solutions beyond the grid.
Last month, Powerless was released on Google Play and in the iTunes Store -- presenting a new opportunity for those interested in energy to learn about the challenges of energy access in India. The film enjoyed a two-week theatrical run in India, the record for a documentary in India, and has also received positive acclaim from electricity boards and institutions such as the World Bank.
As for the filmmakers’ hopes for the film, Fahad says, “We want to see more public involvement in thinking about the future energy, and more holistic ways to think of solutions.” They believe that more dialogue between the public and government institutions will strengthen the institutions.
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