Power Game: The Commissar and the Squirrel

Frequent power outages are back to haunt the new DMK Government in Tamil Nadu. Electricity Minister Senthil Balaji is in an unenviable situation. Initially, he explained that it was due to maintenance works left unattended by the previous AIADMK government. When power disruption turned out to be more frequent, the minister, in his attempt to explain it away, shifted the blame on squirrels running amok on power cables, writes M C Rajan, Bureau Chief, ETV Bharat, Chennai.

Chennai: Frequent power outages are back to haunt the new DMK Government in Tamil Nadu. Electricity Minister Senthil Balaji is in an unenviable situation. Initially, he explained that it was due to maintenance works left unattended by the previous AIADMK government. When power disruption turned out to be more frequent, the minister, in his attempt to explain it away, shifted the blame on squirrels running amok on power cables. For this unusual reasoning, he got trolled and an avalanche of memes followed coupled with opposition derision. On Tuesday, he made it clear that power cuts won't be there anymore except during regular maintenance work. But the poor little squirrel has rattled the DMK.

For the DMK, the power sector continues to remain its Achilles' heel, whenever the party is in power. So much so that in popular perception, the Dravidian major and power cuts have become synonymous. Indeed the DMK's defeat in the 2011 assembly election was primarily attributed to prolonged power outage crippling agriculture and industry alike. Now, soon after the new DMK government assumed office, blackouts have raised their ugly head. When Electricity Minister V Senthil Balaji shifted the blame on squirrels running amok on the cables as the villain, he got a taste of online troll and opposition ridicule.

Initially, the Minister's reasoning that carrying out maintenance works abandoned by the then AIADMK government was resulting in outages across the state, was swallowed like a bitter pill. But, then he pointed fingers at the harmless and amiable squirrel, a pet for many, last week has not gone down well, opening up the floodgates of derisive memes. His belated statement that there won't be any power cuts hasn't helped salvage the damage.

"Power outages in certain places occur when cables come into contact due to squirrels running on them and tree branches crossing the lines," was his reasoning at a media briefing.

It had an echo in the assembly as well with the principal opposition, AIADMK training its guns on Balaji, a former AIADMK strongman. "In Chennai, it's mostly underground cables. How come, squirrels could be the reason?" questioned former Power Minister, P Thangamani.

Another former minister, Sellur K Raju, who floated the thermocol sheets on Vaigai dam to prevent evaporation of water, had this to say, "I was ridiculed as a 'modern scientist' for the thermocol event. Now, Senthil Balaji has eclipsed me."

The BJP too had taken up cudgels on behalf of the charming little creature, saying it had been blessed by no less a person than Lord Ram. “While in Ramayana the lord has elevated the squirrel, the DMK is blaming it to cover their inefficiency,” BJP legislator and party Mahila morcha national president Vanathi Sreenivasan has said.

Bequeathed by a debt-burdened Electricity Board, the new DMK government faces an uphill task and an onerous responsibility. Even the CAG report had blamed the AIADMK government of Edappadi K Palaniswami for administrative inefficiency, resulting in a huge loss to the TANGEDCO, which has an accumulated debt of over Rs one lakh. It has also faulted the then regime of being interested in purchasing power from private producers at exorbitant rates rather than augmenting production from state-run utilities.

In what looked like a minister versus squirrel battle, in which the latter held an upper hand, the powerful Left trade unions have come to the aid of the beleaguered minister. According to Jai Shankar, president of CITU-affiliated Central Organisation of TN Electricity Employees, the minister could not be faulted since it is a fact.

“What the minister spoke can't be disputed. Besides the squirrel, crows, mongoose and snakes too cause power disruption. It is there in the US and other countries in the west. Even now, some were assigned the task of chasing out crows at substations and ahead of inspections by ministers or top officials, we used to check the underground cable lines for reptiles and rodents. Squirrels and birds or snakes take shelter at junction boxes in the urban centres causing power supply disruption,” he explained. He also pointed out that for the last couple of years proper maintenance like replacement of insulators and other safety measures has not been carried out resulting in the present chaos.

Though the power situation is not grim as is being alleged by the opposition, the squirrel had captured the popular imagination, leaving the commissar to do the firefighting.