November 26, 2008
Posted: 538 GMT

CHENNAI, India - This was by far one of the most difficult pieces that we have put together.

Caught short: Power supplies in Chennai are causing problems for companies.
Caught short: Power supplies in Chennai are causing problems for companies.

For starters, it seemed like a simple task. Chennai, India’s fourth largest city located in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, has been facing a shortage of power for quite some time now.

Yet this bustling city has seen an overflow of investors making a beeline to set up manufacturing units. With companies like Ford, Chevrolet, Hyundai and many more automotive industries setting up shop in this city, it’s no surprise that this place has often been called the Detroit of India. The big question for us was how do these businesses manage to get by with constant power shortage?

Our interest in power shortage was triggered when our Chennai-based correspondent Liz Neisloss was shown a letter addressed to one of the major car companies by the electricity board early last year.
It stated that companies would have to shut down on an assigned weekday “in order to tide over the situation on the temporary shortage of power availability”.

Liz also noticed that fathers were dropping kids to school because they were off from work due to “power holidays.”

What started as a relatively simple story to do turned into quite a challenge! Liz and I called over a dozen big businesses to try and get them to talk to us on camera about the power situation. Some gave us an emphatic no while others came up with a polite excuse. All this after they admitted that power shortage was a problem. It might seem a little wary but it is understood that the electricity board of Chennai is not going to be too happy to hear businesses complain about power cuts.

One of the small scale business managers for an auto parts industry said that one way to function with power cuts is to operate on a 24-hour shift. So when the power goes down, all is quite and you resume work only after the power is back up again. We were told that sometimes businesses are informed beforehand when power cuts are likely to happen.

After much searching we did manage to get a business owner to tell us how he functions with power cuts.
Watch Liz Neisloss' report.

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Filed under: India


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Jolanda   November 26th, 2008 2110 GMT

Being living in west, I am always amazed by the success story of India. This country has achieved a world standing just in 60 years ( infact in last 15 years) after getting independence in 1947.

I am little surprised and confused that this week program" India means business" on CNN seems like a anti-India propaganda by CNN reporters. More than 80 % time, they are talking about lack of infrastructure, lack of electricity and problem of slow India government. We in th west has created all this wealth in centuries what you can expect India/china to do just in 15 years.

Even now, when we in the west are in deep crisis, India is going to grow by 6- 7 % with 1 trillion dollar GDP economy, ( 8 biggest economy in the world) which is superb.

Let;s western friends and journalists be humble and appreaciate India and china's contribution today's world economy.

Thank you,

david lulasa   November 28th, 2008 900 GMT

so,its a wake up call to india,whats important to them?using nuclear power to make war heads or nuclear power for electricity?i also think that the TATA guys could make more money if they began distributing power to these indians than they intend to make more cash from the manufacture of the cheapest smallest car in the world.

tambua,.hamisi,kenya.

Emmerentia   November 30th, 2008 1030 GMT

So what is new in these up and coming economies? Here in South Africa we also face the same problem, bad planning on projects has had the effect that we have, especially early in this year had what was called "load shedding". A nice expression for power cuts because our electrical infrastructure just cannot cope with the growing economy. I do not understand why citizens should be patient with their governments when they are slow to plan on important things that benefit all citizens but very quick to plan and implement projects that boost their own pockets (such as our weapons deal with western countries that involved bribes to government officials).

It is unfortunate that persons with the best brains in a country, do not take up government posts and so you sit with people of mediocre intelligence who just cannot comprehend that sufficient energy is a number 1 given for growth!!

BG KOSHY   December 2nd, 2008 651 GMT

Yolanda suffers from xenophobia and false patriotism. She need not build power plants in India. Let her build one women's toilet. India would then be short of 9.99million women's loos. Ostich-like behaviour will not solve India's myriad problems. The power outage in Bangalore is the worst in south India. The roads too. Unless you accept these problems we will never catch up with say Malaysia or Singapore – forget about Poland or Estonia.

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