Asia | Electric dreams
Soon it will need as much electricity as Europe
|Bhubaneswar|6 min read
KEEPING THE power on in India is a tricky business. All across the country, grids are creaking as demand soars. Distribution companies are struggling to invest—in part because they have been saddled with the cost of providing cheap power to farmers and in part because of plain old theft. “People in urban areas are smart, they’ll tamper with the meter,” says Arvind Singh, a power executive in the eastern state of Odisha. “In rural areas they’ll just hook into the network, and if you catch them you’ll have to have a big fight.”
This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Electric dreams”
From the January 17th 2026 edition
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