India’s northwestern state of Rajasthan has planned four hours of power outages for industry, making it at least the third region to disrupt industrial activity in order to control rising electricity demands in the middle of a Heatwave.
Extreme heat has continued to ravage large areas of southern Asia this week, not providing relief after the hottest March in India’s history, and sparked remarks by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about India’s hottest morning. The Indian subcontinent west of Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh cut off industrial activity this month as air demand increased and economic activity increased after the coronavirus-related restrictions ended.
The Rajasthan desert region has also imposed four-hour power outages in rural areas, exposing thousands of families in the desert at high temperatures, as high summer temperatures are yet to come before the cold rains in June. India’s energy demand rose sharply on Tuesday, and is expected to rise by about ten next month. The India Meteorological Department has warned of severe heatwave conditions in the coming days.
Unprecedented heat puts millions of hardworking workers, including construction and farm workers, as well as those working on factory store floors, in grave danger. Sunstrokes have killed thousands of Indians in the past. Industrial disruption and widespread power outages are bad news for Indian companies, as economic activity has only just begun to grow after months of stagnation during the closure of the coronavirus.
The rapid rise in electricity demand has also left India in search of coal, which is widely used to generate electricity. Coal prices are at a very low pre-summer level for at least nine years and electricity demand seems to be rising rapidly at about 40 years.The shortage of trains exacerbates the problem, as the Indian energy secretary told a court-appointed meeting this week that the availability of trains was 6% less than necessary.
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