Enforced Earth Hour?

"Earth Hour is a worldwide event organized by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and held on the last Saturday of March annually, encouraging households and businesses to turn off their non-essential lights for one hour to raise awareness about the need to take action on climate changes. The event, conceived by WWF and Leo Burnett, first took place in 2007, when 2.2 million residents of Sydney participated by turning off all non-essential lights. Following Sydney's lead, many other cities around the world adopted the event in 2008. Earth Hour 2012 took place on 31 March 2012 from 8:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m., at participants' local time." - (Ref: Wikipedia)

In most parts of India "Earth Hour" is enforced by the Government every day during most parts of the year. If it is summer or the months leading up to summer, compulsory load shedding (as it is called) is implemented for 6-12 hours depending on whether you are in urban or rural area.  During rainy season, electricity is turned off in most parts of the country to avoid accidents due to uprooted poles, snapped cables and others. During winter electricity is turned off for maintenance works. So common  is the power cut or load shedding as it is called that jokes abound and even essential services like watering the field is scheduled to suit the power availability rather than the need of the crop.   Those, who do participate are the ones who live in urban areas, buffered by inverters, generators guzzling more electricity in a day than would the their rural and small town counterparts in a month. To  the average Indian, accustomed to managing without electricity for essential as well as non- essential activities almost everyday or night, "Earth Hour" organized all over the World has no meaning.

Even after six and a half decades of independence Indian is unable to meet the progressively increasing needs of its population with reference to electricity. Instead of electrifying the villages and getting them used to a comfort which cannot be sustained it would have been better to leave them to their natural resources and life styles. What is the use of proudly stating that "every village is electrified to enjoy power cuts". Even the enforced "Earth Hour" does not make the average Indians realize that they are responsible for this "powerless" state and only if they consume electricity intelligently can they have power supply without cuts!