Inverter Generat(or)ion

The long spells of load shedding - which are increasing by hours every day makes me wonder how long will this menace continue to haunt our lives.

Photograph by Jalal HB [Shared at Jalaspages / Flickr]

We grew up in days when such things were never heard of - we had plenty of everything, including electricity. Light offs were only heard in wars in the black out nights and there were never any log spells of power outages as we are witnessing today. Even such things were not there as long as three were people who could manage this country well as they loved it as their own too. 

But now it seems there are two kind of people in our country: 'People' who rule and people who are ruled. For the People who rule, there seems to be no limit to enjoy the perks and privileges at the expense of taxes paid by the People who pay and are still ruled. And this is very true when it comes to living as an ordinary human being. 

The long spells of power outages which now stretch to five to six hours at a stretch even in cities speak volumes of inefficiency of those who are mismanaging the the power sector in Pakistan. The power tariff has been raised something like 200% over the past couple of years, but still there is no relief to the people. every other day, the president and the prime minister 'take notice' of the long spells of load shedding, make statements to pledge to look into the matter - but the matter is so deep welled that it is taking much more than the required time to come up with a solution.

Load shedding has become so central to the miserable life of  the people that nothing else comes to mind while talking and writing about our grievances. When we were kids, we heard the world 'the generation gap.' But today it is the inverter generation that is cursing its life. From infants to old, students and labourers, everyone knows one world - load shedding and inverter (commonly called the UPS). From a generation gap we have become an inverter genear(or)ion or simply an inverter generation - a generation whose life now hinges more on inverters and generators than anything else.

Those who can inverters - a cheap alternative to electricity are even now facing miseries as an inverter cannot run for more than at best two hours. When the spell of lead shedding were less, these inverters helped a lot for a fan to run and a light to glow, but now even these gadgets have lost their utility. I wonder how students would be preparing for their exams with no light. In the past, poor who did not have light would go and sit under a nearby lamp-post - but now even the lamp posts are switched off.

I simply pity the inverter generation.

Posted in: Generator.,Inverter,Life,Load Shedding,Loadshedding,Power Outages