Rate India\'s Outgoing Power Minister

By HEATHER TIMMONS and SRUTHI GOTTIPATI

Barkha Dutt, NDTV anchor: So you're satisfied with your stint in the power ministry? How would you rate yourself? Would you rate yourself average, good, very good or excellent?

Sushil Kumar Shinde, the outgoing power minister:  Excellent!

Mr. Shinde, who just has been promoted to minister of home affairs, India's top security position, raised some eyebrows when he declared himself an “excellent” power minister in an interview with NDTV on Wednesday. After all, Mr. Shinde has just presided over the world's biggest blackout. Two of them, in fact: on Monday and Tuesday, when massive grid failures left hundreds of millions in India without power.

Mr. Shinde's move to the ministry of home affairs, which was announced Tuesday as part of a reshuffle of the cabinet, was roundly criticized as ill-timed and tone deaf. The move is an obvious sign of the r uling Congress Party's “preference to seniority and not to merit,” the Hindustan Times wrote.

Responses to Mr. Shinde's interview, and his own personal rating, were swift and acerbic: “Is Sushil Kumar Shinde a staff writer at The Onion ?” Sachin Kalbag, executive editor of the newspaper Mid Day, asked on Twitter, referring to the satirical newspaper.

Mr. Shinde asked that viewers appreciate that the power was turned back on in India in a matter of hours. “In 2003, the same situation arose in North America, and at that time for four days continuously, America was not having power,” he said. (In 2003, part of eight states were blacked out after a power surge, but many areas had power after 24 hours.) “India has handled the situation well,” Mr. Shinde said.

Despite some reports to the contrary, Mr. Shinde laid the blame for the outages fully on states that were withdrawing more power than they should have. “The grid failed because of the over loading of the power,” he said, contending that “many states” try to take more power than scheduled.

His assertion seemed to be contradicted by the incoming power minister, M. Veerappa Moily. “We don't want to be in the blame game,” Mr. Moily said during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.

“According to assessment the world over, India has the best and largest power grid system,” Mr. Moily said. The “question is, ‘What has happened?'”

How would you rate Mr. Shinde's performance as power minister? Please let us know in the comments below.

Overdrawing Not Behind India\'s Blackout, State Official Says

By PAMPOSH RAINA

Finger-pointing has begun in earnest over India's recent massive power outages.

Although some government power authorities, electric company executives, the departing power minister and much of India's news media blamed the grid failures Monday and Tuesday on various states they said had taken in more than their expected power allotment, thus causing the grid to fail, others called that a mistaken oversimplification.

“This hype that states are overdrawing is the reason for the collapse is not right,” said Ajit Sharan, the power secretary for Haryana state. It is too early to say what, exactly, happened, he said.

Mr. Sharan and others point towards the system run by the central government agency, the Northern Regional Load Dispatch Center, that issues warnings to states if they are drawing excessive power.

Mr. Sharan said that 50 hertz of power is the ideal frequency for the grid. If the supply dips to 49.7 hertz, a warning is issued by NRLDC to any state that is overdrawing, he said. If the power falls below the 49.7 hertz mark, a second warning is issued.

But that was not the case when the grid failed, he said. “At the time when the grid collapsed, the frequency was 50.2 hertz,” he said, which is normal.

Haryana is one of the states that has reportedly been drawing excess power from the northern grid, which some say led to the grid's collapse.

“There is nothing wrong with overdrawing of power,” Mr. Sharan said. “There is a quota for every state. While some states overdraw, the others underdraw. If no state overdraws, then where will the excessive power go?”

Mr. Sharan said that the transmission link between Agra in Uttar Pradesh state and Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh state had shut down, probably because power had been overdrawn. This link connects the western grid and the northern grid.

When that happene d, the central power control agency “did not send a timely message,” he said. As soon as the grid there developed a problem, he said, “it should have been isolated, but that did not happen.” How the situation developed from there is not known, he added.

Naresh Kumar, the chief public relations manager for the National Regional Load Dispatch Center, declined to comment on the Agra-Gwalior shutdown. A committee formed by the Power Ministry is looking into the matter, he said.

Indian TV Network Sues Nielsen Over Ratings Data

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

A leading Indian television network, New Delhi Television, or NDTV, “has sued the Nielsen Company, accusing its Indian joint venture of providing ‘false, fabricated and manipulated data' on TV ratings for almost a decade,” Vikas Bajaj wrote in The New York Times.

NDTV says the manipulated data cost it nearly a billion dollars in advertising revenue, and the suit is seeking several billion dollars in damages.

The company filed the suit late last week in New York State Supreme Court against Nielsen; its Indian joint venture, TAM Media Research; and Kantar Media Research, which owns a 50 percent stake in the Indian business.

NDTV, which is best known for broadcasting a 24-hour English-language news station, accuses employees of TAM of manipulating ratings in exchange for kickbacks from other TV networks. It further says that Nielsen, TAM and Kantar executives did not move to address the problems when NDTV presented “evidence of corruption and manipulation” to them earlier this year in several meetings, some of which were attended by senior Nielsen and Kantar executives.

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Ramadan Poses Challenges to Muslim Athletes

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“With nearly three million Muslims living in Britain, the observance of Ramadan here is not generally a notable occurrence,” Sam Borden wrote in The New York Times. “But the Olympics have made this far from an ordinary summer in England,” which has “led to a variety of issues for the estimated 3,000 Muslim athletes and officials at the Games,” he wrote.

“Restrictions for Ramadan are laid out in the second chapter of the Koran, where it is written: ‘And whosoever of you is present, let him fast the month, and whosoever of you is sick or on a journey, a number of other days,' Mr. Borden wrote. For most athletes competing at the Olympics the second part of that passage has been the rationale to postpone their fast until after competition, but not for all.

For Coach Pim Verbeek, who is from the Netherlands and not Muslim, that breakdown has required an increasi ngly difficult scheduling dance. During training, Verbeek held two sets of meals and two different practices: one practice at noon, when the fasting players were generally sleeping, with the other at 6:30 p.m., when the fasting players were able to work because they would follow it by breaking their fast a few hours later.

In other words, while most teams at the Games were doing everything they could to become more unified as competition approached, Verbeek's team had split in two.

“Our full team hasn't eaten a full meal together since July 20,” Verbeek said in an interview. “It's interesting, I suppose, but it's not very good timing.”

Then there are performance concerns. Dehydration is the primary problem for athletes. Verbeek said his team trainers had to double-check which players they were tossing water bottles to during games to make sure they were not offering water to the observant players.

The lack of fluids can sometimes also cause pa rticularly awkward moments during standard postmatch drug testing.

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India\'s Troubled Olympic Odyssey

By MALAVIKA VYAWAHARE

India opened its medal tally at the London Olympics 2012 with Gagan Narang winning the bronze on Monday in the 10-meter air rifle shooting event.

The win has been accompanied by several setbacks, though, since the Olympics opened on Friday. The men's doubles tennis team of Mahesh Bhupathi and Rohan Bopanna faced a crushing straight sets defeat Tuesday, which also saw the ouster of the badminton mixed doubles team of Jwala Gutta and V. Diju from the competition. The men's field hockey team lost to the Netherlands (3-2) on Monday and will be playing New Zealand in a preliminary round match Wednesday.

Here's an update on the rest of India's Olympic athletes:

Another Indian star shooter, Abhinav Bindra, who won a gold at the Beijing Olympics, ended his London stint on a disappointing note on Monday, failing to advance in his only event, the 10-meter air rifle. His compatriot Mr . Narang stays in the competition with the 50-meter rifle prone event on Friday and the 50-meter rifle 3 positions on Aug. 6.

Saina Nehwal, ranked fourth in the world by the Badminton World Federation, is a strong contender for a medal in the women's badminton singles. She will look to set her Olympic record straight this year, having been eliminated in the quarterfinals in the last Olympics.

Ms. Nehwal won her group-stage match Monday against Lianne Tan of Belgium, booking a place in the 16-player elimination round.

In tennis, the men's doubles team of Leander Paes and Vishnu Vardhan are still in the running even as the women's doubles team of Sania Mirza and Rushmi Chakravarthi crashed out in the first round.

The second-round match between Leander Paes and Vishnu Vardhan and the second-seeded French pair of Jo-Wilfried Tsonga and Michael Llodra, has been postponed to Wednesday.

Mr. Paes will pair with Ms. Mirza in the mixed doubles event.

< p>In boxing, India's medal hopes are being kept alive by Vijender Singh (middleweight category) and Jai Bhagwan (lightweight category), both of whom qualified for the round of 16. Mr. Singh was a bronze medalist at the last Olympics. Both Mr. Singh and Mr. Bhagwan will face their opponents on Thursday.

However, Shiva Thapa, another boxer, ended up with a first-round exit on Saturday in his Olympic debut.

Mary Kom, a five-time women's boxing world champion from Manipur, India, will fight her first match on Aug. 5 in the flyweight category. This is the first time women's boxing is part of the Olympics.

In archery, India is out of the competition in the men's and women's team events, but Deepika Kumari continues to be one of the leading contenders for a medal in the singles event. Ms. Kumari, who is ranked No. 1 by the World Archery Federation, will compete against England's Amy Oliver on Wednesday.

This year's flag bearer for the Indian contingent, the wrestler Sushil Kumar, will bear the weight of a billion expectations when he enters the ring in the 66-kilogram freestyle wrestling event on Aug. 12, the final day of the London Olympics. Mr. Kumar had bagged the bronze at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 in the same event.

Power Restored to Most of India Wednesday Morning

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

After India suffered the largest electrical blackout in history on Tuesday, power had been almost completely restored to all the affected areas as of 8:30 a.m. Wednesday.

The metropolitan area of Delhi and the north eastern region are up and running, power in the northern and eastern region have been restored at 98 percent and 95 percent respectively, according a report from the government's National Load Despatch Center.

Tuesday's blackout affected a broad swath of India that encompassed about 670 million people.

India\'s Electrical Grid: Did Someone Fall Asleep at the Controls?

By THE NEW YORK TIMES

“The Indian electrical grid, said Arshad Mansoor, the senior vice president for research and development at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, Calif., is like “a whole bunch of rubber bands.” Cutting some, he said, might make no difference, but cutting another one could make the web fall apart,” Matthew Wald wrote in The New York Times.

The area blacked out in India is effectively a single, interconnected grid, which means that power is transmitted through it almost instantaneously, as are imbalances, Raj Rao, an American electric company executive who is a frequent visitor to India, told Mr. Wald.

India is chronically short of generating capacity, but that still does not explain outages like those that happened Monday and Tuesday:

The most likely mechanism was a botched attempt to black out a small area temporarily, Mr. Rao said.

For e xample, he said, if the generating capacity was 120 megawatts and the available capacity was 100, that would require unplugging 20 megawatts of load.

“My hunch is, somebody fell asleep and they did not cut off the 20 megawatts,” he said. “And that's where you run into trouble.”

When demand on the generators runs higher than they can satisfy, they automatically disconnect themselves to prevent mechanical damage, and as each one drops off, it makes a cascade more certain, he said. The first generators would cut out in a fraction of a second, he said.

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