Opinion
Opinion: A fuse in the dark is not an excuse
When homes go dark and factories stall, a minister's weather report is not governance. Electricity is a promise the state makes every evening.
A government can survive a bad headline. It cannot indefinitely survive a dark street. When residents of Mudaliarpatti carry torches through their own lanes, when women workers in a Tiruvallur industrial park must besiege the electricity office to be heard, the issue is no longer public relations. It is the oldest test of the state: can it keep the light on?
The TVK government's answer this week was a lesson in displacement. Wind generation faltered, several states were affected, power was purchased, supply was restored. Every sentence may contain a technical truth. Together they miss the political one. A household does not experience a national generation mix. It experiences a fan that stops, a motor that burns, a shop shutter pulled down early, a child studying by a phone torch. Governance is measured there, not in the megawatts procured after the protest.
Periyar taught that self-respect begins when people stop begging for what is theirs by right. Anna turned that lesson into administration: welfare is not charity from a leader's hand, it is the citizen's share delivered without humiliation. Kalaignar's politics, at its best, understood that dignity is built in the unglamorous details, a bus that arrives, a ration shop that opens, a current that does not fail in the middle of dinner. Electricity belongs in that list. It is not a favour announced from a stage. It is infrastructure for self-respect.
That is why Udhayanidhi Stalin's phrase, a fuse-blown government, stings. It names not one outage but a habit of explanation. First the wind, then the predecessor, then the Centre, then the protester who complains too loudly. A ministry that reaches for an excuse before it reaches for a repair crew has inverted its duty. The citizen is not a disturbance in the system. The citizen is the reason the system exists.
Opposition rhetoric alone will not repair a feeder line. The DMK and every party that seeks to govern Tamil Nadu must answer with more than a metaphor: published outage data by district, honest notice before maintenance cuts, compensation when voltage destroys a small unit's machinery, and a public account of what wind shortfall means for procurement the next summer, not only the next evening. But the burden today is on those who hold the switch. A fuse in the dark is a technical fault. Keeping people in the dark about when it will be fixed is a political choice.
Sources
Share this story
Related articles
Torches in the dark: Udhayanidhi slams TVK over fresh power cuts
Unscheduled outages and low voltage have pushed residents and small industries onto the streets, and the opposition says the TVK government is blaming the wind instead of fixing the grid.
· 2 min read
Opinion: The city is clean because someone is paid too little to clean it
Madurai's conservancy strike is not a dispute about one contractor. It is about a city that outsourced its dirtiest work and then refused to sign its own assurance. Dignity begins with staffing and pay.
· 2 min read
A pause, not a settlement: Chennai nurses suspend hunger strike and give TVK until November 3
Chennai mid-level nurses suspended their hunger strike after talks with the Health Secretary, but warned of a statewide agitation from November 3 if pay, permanency and pending dues are not settled.
· 2 min read
Opinion: A wage must not require surrendering your mother tongue
The Bengaluru warehouse row is not a language misunderstanding. It is a test of self-respect at work: no wage should require a worker to surrender their mother tongue to keep a job.
· 2 min read