THE root cause for a deteriorating power supply deficit wreaking havoc on our lives, as perhaps never before on the current scale, doesn't lie in lack of funds even though this is the much-touted reason making the rounds. Evidently, more as an excuse than any plausible explanation for what we deem to be a human, more precisely, a patent management failure.

First and foremost, there is warped, a hugely unrealistic assessment of the demand-supply situation. Whereas the power generation capacity in summer is between 3300 and 3600 MW for the whole country, the demand is shown at around 4200 MW. In reality, it hovers around 5000 MW. As for the Dhaka city, on Wednesday, the deficit ran into 1800 MW but it was underestimated at 1400 MW. It is not any rocket science to miss the obvious that with such erroneous, underestimated, baseline calculations of demand, PWD and DESA will make a mess of any semblance of rational power distribution.

The tragic part of the whole story is, in the last five years demand for electricity has grown by 2500 MW compared to just 80 MW worth of increase in the generation capacity over the last three years. The structural deficiencies are too glaringly mirrored in the simple statistic that out of 65 power generation units, as many as 34 are as old as 20 to 30 years.

When that is the uninspiring perspective, pledges and assurances have been held out at regular intervals raising hopes for an improvement round the corner that never happens. For instance, 12 projects were planned to be taken up for commissioning between 2003 and 2006 to raise the generation capacity by 2200 MW which would have eased the deficit considerably; but alas! they remain on the wish-list into the terminal year of the targeted deadline.

When will these projects ever get implemented? What a track record in the power sector the ruling coalition is facing the next general election with!