As is usual in the winter, power shortage in Jammu and Kashmir is back in discourse in a big way. It is after many years that the union territory is facing unscheduled power cuts in winter beyond the normal curtailment schedule. If we go by the logic of the Kashmir Power Development Corporation, it is the power pilferers who are responsible for this state of affairs. The corporation is currently naming and shaming people in its videos posted on its social media handles, a practice that has generated widespread resentment among the people in the valley. Acting like a mob, the corporation’s ground staff in its videos throws due process to the winds and humiliates people by identifying them. What is more, it adds colourful posts to the videos to have a hearty laugh at the expense of people, with some local bureaucrats in tow.
It is unfair to blame people for being responsible for what can only be termed as the JKPDC’s own failing. Provision of services and enforcing the rule of law is the job of the corporation. If there is pilferage of power, it is the corporation that is responsible, not the people. There can be no power theft if there is no collusion by the officials working for the corporation and deployed to the colonies where power theft takes place. For people can only pilfer power when they are allowed to do so. How come the lineman of the locality who knows each household by his heart not be responsible. How come he doesn’t know that power pilfering is taking place? Isn’t this dereliction of his duty? So, if anyone has to be taken to task, it is the local PDC official, not the power pilferer, for who knows the latter must have been encouraged to do so in lieu of some gratification. It can thus safely be concluded that the PDC has failed to enforce the law, rather than consumers breaching it.
The fact is that power is a complex and very contentious subject in J&K. And if anybody is responsible for messing it up or failing to provide curtailment-free electricity to the state for the past six decades, it is the successive state governments who have overlooked the exploitation of the region’s resources. Blaming people can therefore be termed only an abdication of the responsibility by the PDC. For the corporation, its own officials are innocent. It is the people who are thieves. While this inanity will do nothing to redeem the existing situation, it will feed the resentment brewing among people against the PDC and in turn against the administration.
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