Cold comfort

India suffers a chronic power shortage as last year’s grid breakdown highlighted. But Nobel laureate Amartya Sen said you wouldn’t think so if you visited government offices where the air-conditioning is kept at a bone-chilling 16 degrees Celsius in the summer. This was quite unlike government offices in other Asian countries, which keep the temperature at 24 degrees to save electricity consumption, he said at a recent do in the capital. True to form, however, Sen decided to find out why. “We feel cold but we somehow manage,” shrugged an official by way of explanation. Clearly, the simple power-saving ruse of raising the temperature, a small service to the nation, has not occurred to India’s bureaucrats and ministers.