Why India's Massive Power Outages Get Fixed More Quickly Than D.C.'s

In India, a massive power outage has left an estimated 670 million people – 10 percent of the world's population – without power. It's the second outage affecting hundreds of millions of people within just two days, events that are far and away the largest power outages ever seen. And yet, within hours, the problems had mostly been solved.

When the first outage hit on Monday, it was being called the biggest power outage to occur in India in about a decade. Not history. Not the last 50 years. But just over the last 10 years or so. That a cataclysmic power outage could happen so frequently is a pretty damning reality for the public utilities of India. And, indeed, power outages are common in India, though they're typically much smaller. On Tuesday, the northern grid collapsed, cutting power for hundreds of millions of people, grinding to a halt activity in places as densely populated as New Delhi. But despite the relative frequency of such large-scale outages, it's also interesting to note how relatively quickly these problems have also been resolved – especially so close on the heels of recent power outages in the U.S. that left many people without power for more than a week.