Human, animal lives at risk
| | |
| By: Nava ThakuriaIndia has made an astonishing effort to electrify its 279 million-plus households even in the face of extreme rural and urban poverty, with the share of households using electricity as the primary source of lighting rising from 26 percent in 1980 to 97 percent in 2020. Over the past two decades alone, successive government schemes have brought nearly 800 million Indians out of darkness, according to India’s Council on Energy, Environment and Water. Unfortunately, that has spurred a depressing spate of electrocutions, not only of people but of wild animals, from haphazardly strung power lines and ground-level electric fences. Often bamboo poles or even living trees are temporarily used to carry electrical wires. Uninsulated, loosely-hanging power lines carrying 240 volts (also 11,000 volts) have snagged people, cars including a truck cited in 2022 by the India Times in which 11 people including two children died during a religious procession in Tamil Nadu. Badly-strung wires have fallen on people and electrocuted them. Recently, a 16-year-old student named Subham Kumar Roy in the northeast Indian state of Assam touched a water fountain in a public place, only to be killed instantly when it transpired that a live electric wire had somehow come into contact with the water. The youth became one of at least 11,000 people who die annually from accidental electrocution, one of the highest rates of accidents in the world. Other problems are caused by poverty-stricken families or communities that string their own lines to steal power with substandard installation…
To read the whole thing and get full access to Asia Sentinel's reporting and archives, subscribe now for US$10/month or US$100/year.This article is among the stories we choose to make widely available. If you wish to get the full Asia Sentinel experience and access more exclusive content, please do subscribe to us for US$10/month or US$100/year. | |
