Grid down catastrophe strikes India - half the population loses power

"Grids supplying electricity to half of India's 1.2 billion people collapsed on Tuesday," reports Reuters. "The outage was the worst to hit India in more than a decade and embarrassed the government, which has failed to build up enough power capacity to meet soaring demand."

More than just a single power failure, this "grid down" catastrophe is a cascading failure that has spanned many days and impacted an ever-expanding set of geographic regions. "More than a dozen states with a population of 670 million people were without power," writes Reuters (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/07/31/uk-india-blackout-idUSLNE86...).

It is not yet known how quickly power might be restored, but what's becoming increasingly clear is that India's power grid is in shambles, much like its roads and railways. In fact, there's almost nothing in India's infrastructure that works very well. Even basic items such as traffic lights seem to be impossible to get installed on many of India's roadways.

Watch this astonishing video to see the kind of traffic situation is commonplace in India's cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsPCsW3_aUY

Here's another example of the kind of total traffic chaos that's now commonplace in India's cities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsZKPnvlx44

Story and Sources Here