Chennai:
Cooking has become a daily challenge for Jasline Jonathan, a young housewife in Coimbatore.
For upto 16 hours a day, there's no power, leaving her mixer-grinder out of action - a freebie given to voters by the AIADMK in last year's elections. So she uses a traditional mortar-pestle to grind her spices and other ingredients.
Her refrigerator is a showpiece, she says. "It's very difficult.. this (points to her grinding stone) is the only way I can manage. Now I'm not able to use my mixer, grinder and fridge, they all have become useless".
Jasline has a four year-old son who sweats it out with her at home. A year ago, her husband, Richard, spent Rs 20,000 on an inverter, an investment in his family's comfort. It hasn't paid off. "The inverter requires at least 24 hours of power to get recharged; where is the power now? It doesn't help."
The state has a deficit of around 4000 MW power every day. On Monday, the Tamil Nadu government took its case to the Supreme Court, arguing that it alone is entitled to surplus power surrendered by Delhi this past winter. The state has also said that it is the union government's responsibility to ensure that there are functional transmission corridors that allow the power it buys from other states to reach Tamil Nadu. Earlier the Minister of State for Electricity had told journalists that the centre is helpless due to congestion in power transmission corridors.
In the industrial town of Coimbatore alone, 40,000 small-scale units have been forced to a stop, causing a loss of 15,000 crore a month. Mr K. Ilango, who is part of the CII in the city, told NDTV, "Workers are leaving and industries are unable to make their payments to the banks. We are on the verge of a collapse".
The state government predicts an improvement next year in its power supply, partly because the controversial nuclear plant at coastal Kudankulam is scheduled to be operational by then.