Give us Bijli.
Not Bandwidth.

[Editor's note: Bijli is a hindi word that means electricity.]

If I press the light switch, and the light actually switches on, I consider it a miracle. We do not have enough electricity in the country for the previous century's greatest invention: the light bulb.

Power cuts are normal, leaving thousands of people freezing in the winter and mildly roasting in the summer. Tempers flare. Traffic lights fail. Offices grind to a halt. One moment thousands of computer screens are glowing with the promise of a new future in the world's largest democracy and self-proclaimed IT superpower. The next moment all the computers switch off simultaneously in one fell swoop. Millions of people busy living their lives across lakhs of homes suddenly find themselves plunged into darkness. In this huge and diverse country, there are still millions more who cannot afford the cost of basic electricity for domestic use. Or even an ordinary light bulb. And some remote villages have yet to receive basic power supply.

In stark contrast, as you read this, a handful of people are burning hundreds of millions of rupees, digging up roads across the country, and laying down expensive cables. Power cables? No. They are spending huge amounts of money so that the elite few can have faster Internet access. They call it Broadband. But even the elite cannot run computers on generators and emergency power backups forever. Everyone needs Bijli. Electricity is the great Indian equalizer. Both broadband initiatives and foolish dotcom-funding in India prove one thing: money can be arranged. Furthermore, the world cannot seem to get enough of our highly skilled manpower. So if we've got the money, the brains, and the initiative, why aren't we urgently solving our bijli problem? Whatever happened to common sense?

You don't need to feel powerless anymore. Welcome to the age of the individual. If you strongly feel about this issue, you can do something. Log on to http://pmindia.nic.in/writetous.htm, and directly send an email to the Indian Prime Minister. Send your suggestions, opinions, and comments to the Minister of Information Technology, Pramod Mahajan, at minister@mit.gov.in. Browse the website of the Indian Power Ministry at http://powermin.nic.in. Do also fire off emails to the editors of your daily newspapers and favorite magazines.

Just thought I'd be upfront about it with you.