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Abstract:
I start with an ethnographic encounter where a junior official in the bureaucracy of electricity takes the decision to switch off electricity supply for dozens of households. This results in a longer power outage for hundreds of people in a city in the south of Pakistan. I show that the decision to prolong the power outages is something that the officials call ‘saving the grid’. A strategy which allows them to keep the recovery rates up in the context of rising tariff prices, which are results of privatisation of electricity.
Bio:
Asad Abbasi is a final year PhD student at the School of Global Studies at the University of Sussex. Asad’s thesis looks at Chinese financed coal-fuelled power plants and infrastructure of electricity in Pakistan. Asad has a masters degree in economic history and international development from LSE and an undergrad in economics from Queen Mary, University of London.