There, on a charpoy, a group of louts are playing cards. Amar Chaudhary, one of them, lifts his head to let us in on what's a tell-tale story of brute resistance to authority: "Last October, people from the nearby subdivision came to instal the HVDs (high-voltage distribution system meant to check power thefts) in our village. We just beat them up and forced out their poles. How can they impose on us something that we do not want?" In adjoining Nagooran, Prem Singh and a group of farmers are unrepentant at increasing the size of their submersible motors without paying the enhanced security deposit. Says Prem: "If any official comes here, we will hit them with a sickle. Why should we pay our bills when it is the department's own staff that facilitates power theft?"

Welcome to Haryana's Jat heartland, where power theft accounts for a whopping 34 per cent of electricity losses. In neighbouring Punjab, farmers, brought up on a diet of free power, waste much of it, using it to overdraw water from fast-depleting groundwater aquifers. So it isn't surprising that two of the nation's most prosperous states are facing their worst power shortages ever--leading to widespread agitation--and the government machinery is helpless. "There's very little we can do," is the refrain among electricity department officials.

Try telling that to farmers, students, factory owners or activists, who have revolted, blocked roads or just beaten up electricity department officials in frustration at the long power cuts. Households in rural areas were getting just two to four hours of electricity a day. It's only after students raised a hue and cry ahead of impending examinations that the supply was raised--still only to six hours a day. The stir only intensified. "A few days ago, we took two tractorloads of people to the substation and beat up the staff there," says Zile Singh in Ahirka village. "Our children are unable to study. For more than a year, we are getting just 4 to 5 hours of electricity a day."

The bleak power scenario is jeopardising Haryana's dream of becoming the newest sunshine state. When chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda took a bow at the recent CII convention in Gurgaon for being the best investment destination in the country, he carefully skirted the issue of his government's dismal failure in providing sufficient power for industry. Power minister Randeep Singh Surjewalla points out that the demand for power was going up by around 17 per cent annually in Haryana, and in some districts like Gurgaon and Faridabad by almost 20 per cent. "Though we have set in motion additional capacity generation of 4,550 MW, which will come through in the next four years or so, even this may not be enough to meet the burgeoning demand," he says.