The power situation in the Indian cities is extremely distressing Brace yourself to sweat it out in the torrid summer in the coming weeks on account of load shedding, as states are switching off power supply to overcome the shortage of power. And Delhiites are already staying sleepless at nights because of the irritating noise of generators. Delhi Power Purchase Group estimates that the capital is short of 800 mw. Each 100 mw shortage means an hour of cuts. Move to Mumbai, the financial capital, and the situation is no better. Tata Power Company which supplies 1,797 mw every day to the bustling city, has put the power shortage at 400 mw, but expects the situation to worsen in the coming days. Power situation is so much grim that it has short-circuited the US road shows of Sushil Kumar Shinde, the Union minister for power. He has cancelled his visit to New York, Houston and Brazil for the road show for the upcoming ultra mega power projects. What has held Shinde back is the deteriorating power situation, which looms over a large part of the country. 'How much fire-fighting can Shinde do to provide relief to the people and tide over the situation?' is a million dollar question. Realising that he has embarked on a mission impossible, Shinde has been forthcoming in admitting that it will not be possible to completely eliminate loadshedding in the next five years. "India, which generates 1,29,000 mw power, has 70,000 mw shortage. It will take at least five years to overcome this shortage," he said. "Electricity capacity addition should have been done every year," he added. "But this was not done in the last 10 years, resulting in the current power shortage." With an installed capacity of 1,28,000 mw, India faces a 15 per cent shortage in peak demand and a 10 per cent in deficit in energy demand. For the Tenth Five Year Plan (2002-07), the target was scaled down from 41,110 mw to 30,641 mw. Of this too, only 17,995 mw has been added till December 2007. The situation would have been eased but capacities totalling 5,727 mw that was to come up by March 2007 is now facing delays in commissioning. "The power situation is extremely distressing. We know our problems and actions that need to be taken to rectify it. But we are not acting on it," laments Suresh P. Prabhu, former Union minister for power. "Delivery schedules needs to be tightened and accountability has to be fixed. But there is an effort to rationalise delays," Prabhu told Business India, citing how China is adding a power plant every day. He asks the Standing Committee in the Cabinet Secretariat to fix the responsibility. But his own efforts as a power minister in the Vajpayee government were circumvented or torpedoed by the bureaucracy. Policy issues that plague the power sector and administrative bottlenecks have been documented well by the Working Group report prepared by Union ministry for power in the run up to drafting the 11th Five Plan (2007-12). "A total of 12,516 mw will not come up in the present plan (2002-07) on account of geological surprises, natural calamities, court cases, law and order problems, relocation and resettlement issues, among others," the report pointed out. Also, the public sector giant Bharat Heavy Electri-cals Limited was blamed for failing to acquire 'super critical' technology for boilers and turbines. Echoing similar concerns over the severe power crisis, Kuljit Singh of Ernst & Young attributes it two factors. "Generation capacity addition has not kept pace with the rising gdp growth rate. During the 1990s, greater emphasis was given to capacity addition by the private sector. Unfortunately, the capacity addition during that decade was very unimpressive. Private investments did not flow into the sector due to a host of factors, the most prominent being the poor health of sebs, which were the sole buyers of power. Secondly, lack of transmission capacity resulted in severe bottlenecks in the flow of power from surplus to deficit regions. Historically, most states underinvested in their transmission system." Excuses flow in quick, get repeated, debated and documented at national and international for a with alarming regularity, while the people fume and sweat through their summer days -and nights too.