By Ellerine Diengdoh
You may ask me what has prompted this tirade this time. My answer is, frustration!
Picture this. I am in the middle of a class, using PowerPoint to make education come alive, when suddenly the power vanishes, then it comes back and then it goes off again(my students will testify to this in court!). I can only tell you, there is no pain like standing in front of a class, trying to salvage your lesson. It is so painfully frustrating!
And this is not a one-time disaster, it is the daily reality of living in Meghalaya, a state drenched in rain. Drowning in it, to be precise. The irony is that we have so much water that we should actually be swimming in electricity. Yet we generate a pathetic “651.74 MW, comprising 377.03 MW from state utilities, 18.04 MW from private utilities, and 256.67 MW from central utilities”.(Feb 04, 2025 IST | NE NOW )
So what does our government do? It goes, begging at the doorstep of other states, spending crores every month just to keep our lights dimly flickering.
And who benefits from this grand expenditure?
Not us, the citizen who dares to own four light bulbs and gets smacked with a 600 Rs bill.
Not small businesses either, struggling to keep their fridges running but somehow billed as if they are operating a steel plant.
The actual culprits here are the industrial giants, those smoke-belching, power-guzzling leviathans that devour 57% of the state’s electricity while the rest of us sit in the dark. Because in Meghalaya, like everywhere else, if you are small, you get crushed but if you are big, you get fed!
I applied for a government solar rooftop scheme in 2021. It is now 2025, and I am still waiting for a divine reply from the Sun God himself. Maybe the government is still consulting astrologers to find an auspicious time to approve my application. Or maybe they are too busy handing out free solar lights, and you guessed right, to the ones rich enough to build their own nuclear reactors if they wanted to!
Meanwhile,Rajasthan leads India in solar power generation, with an installed capacity of approximately 33,467.98 megawatts (MW). Gujarat follows closely with around 32,924.03 MW, and Tamil Nadu ranks third with about 24,585.29 MW of installed solar capacity. And we, Meghalaya, “the abode of clouds”, who brag that ours is a land blessed with rain, rivers, wind and blinding sunlight, cannot even keep the streetlights on.This is next-level, award-winning, frame-it-and-hang-it-on-the-wall humiliation!
And we must not forget our beloved MeECL. This is an organisation that somehow manages to lose half the electricity it buys in what they call “transmission losses”, which is just a fancy way of saying, “we have no clue where the power went!”. So who pays for this shameful incompetence? You and I do. This isn’t a power crisis, it is government-approved daylight robbery!
Let us now turn our attention to these (over)smart meters. My electricity consumption remains the same each month, yet my bill fluctuates like the stock market. Is this happening to everyone, or have the smart meters developed a personal vendetta against me? Have you also ever wondered why we are now paying more money for NOT having electricity than when we actually did? The power is out for hours, but the bill keeps climbing.
What exactly are we paying for?
The unplanned social bonding with neighbors as everyone gathers outside, cursing the power cuts?
The free memory training as we try to recall where we last put the emergency torch?
The opportunity to hone our shadow puppetry skills under candlelight?
The unexpected cardio workout of running to charge devices the second the power comes back?
The thrill of watching our neighbors die with envy when our inverter is turned on?
Imagine the businesses that can’t function without electricity. Hospitals and clinics where a power cut could literally mean the difference between life and death. Shops depending on cold storage to keep food from rotting. Online jobs that need constant connectivity. Schools, colleges, and universities trying to function in a digital world. And then there is everyone else, just trying to wash, clean, cook, and exist without feeling like they have now gone back to the 1800s.
Despite all this, the government has come up with all sorts of fancy initiatives:
The Smart City project, but who will power this so-called smart city when we can’t even keep the dumb city lit?
PRIME, to build a new army of entrepreneurs. But how will they run businesses, by hand-cranking their machines like in the 1800s?
STEAM education in schools, to teach students the ancient art of fire-making since they will need it when the lights go out?
The solution is staring us in the face.
Fix the miserable grid. Before dreaming up futuristic projects, how about ensuring that the electricity we do have doesn’t disappear altogether?
Renewable energy is everywhere, yet we remain pathetically power-starved. Meanwhile, this government hires consultants for everything, probably even to remind them to exhale after inhaling. So either make them do something useful for once or just admit we are paying obscene fees for professional head-scratchers.
The government must also hunt down every last rupee from the miserable industries that have feasted on free electricity for years. Pulling the plug on them isn’t punishment, it is a minor inconvenience. Because when we, the lesser mortals, miss a bill, we don’t just get a polite reminder, we get a disconnection notice delivered at the speed of light!
And we do not want to be fed the same recycled excuses:
We are working on it. We know you are not!
We need more time. You have had decades!
We will improve. After we start using kerosene lamps again?
This is not a request. This is not a plea. This is a demand for what is rightfully ours. Because we the people of Meghalaya deserve better.
And those in charge should remember, when history looks back at this moment, it will remember who failed and who paid the price!
