And now comes the news that even if the Delhi Government manages to bridge the widening gulf between the demand and availability of power in the Capital, the city's transmission and distribution system will not be able to supply it to your homes. Surely, this is something people in the know have realised all along. The deal with the Himachal Pradesh Government notwithstanding, then, Delhi simply does not have the infrastructure to handle the electricity transmission and distribution requirements of the sprawling metropolis. The Government's preparations for the summer, therefore, included few corrective measures to address this critical shortcoming.

In a city which does not produce power up to its requirements, bargaining with neighbouring States is an exercise which has to be undertaken as a matter of course. The Congress Government in the saddle, though, has made too much noise about its arrangements with the Himachal Government and too little progress with setting its own house in order. Even the much-publicised one-point supply system is being derided by experts as anything but the solution to the Capital's power problems.

True, DVB's transmission and distribution losses at more than 40 per cent are unjustifiable and its annual losses of Rs 700 crore hardly viable, but experts say nothing short of privatisation is going to provide any solution. There is enough evidence, in India and abroad, to suggest that only privatisation can ensure optimum use of assets, negligible transmission and distribution losses and introduction of accountability into the system.

Now the Delhi Government cannot even duck behind the four-month-old excuse of having been in power for too short a while. Delhi's peak demand for the summer was pegged at 2,600 MW last year itself. So there was time enough to lay down the guidelines for evaluation of assets, selection of private players, ownership arrangements and performance norms for eventual privatisation of distribution of power. Delay it as they will, even the shortsighted politicians will have to realise that no other measures are going to produce results. Summer '99, then, only proves the experts right and the Government wrong yet again in their perception of the gravity of the situation and the initiatives required. Sadly, it's the people who are sitting out in the dark for the delay.