Reuters

What India's Massive Power Outage Looks Like

July 31, 2012

Due to a massive grid failure, half of India's population is without power.

India's massive blackout has left more than 670,000,000 people without power. That's equal to:

1/10 the world's population (6.9 billion, Google Public Data, via World Bank)
Half the number of people in the world who have no access to electricity (1.4 billion, United Nations Development Program)
The total population of the world's 75 largest cities (World Atlas)
Twice the population of America (311 million, Google Public Data, via U.S. Census Bureau)
13 times the number of people that lost power in the 2003 U.S. blackout, the worst in the nation's history (50 million, Scientific American)
25 times the number of people who were displaced by conflict or natural disaster in 2011 (26 million, Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre [PDF])

Muslim girls study in the light of candles inside a madrasa or religious school during power-cut in Noida on the outskirts of New Delhi. Photo by Parivartan Sharma/Reuters

About the Author

Amanda Erickson

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Amanda Erickson is a former senior associate editor at CityLab.

Henry Grabar

@HenryGrabar
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Henry Grabar is a staff writer for Slate’s Moneybox and a former fellow at CityLab. He lives in New York.

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