Every time dark clouds gather over Assam, people do not simply prepare for rain. They prepare for darkness
For thousands of households across the state, a storm has become almost synonymous with a power cut.
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The rain may last an hour, the wind may blow for a few minutes and the thunderstorm may pass quickly, but the electricity outage can stretch deep into the night, the next day and, in some rural pockets, several days. In parts of Barak Valley, residents say they have learnt to treat prolonged blackouts as an unavoidable consequence of bad weather.
The uncomfortable question is no longer whether Assam can keep its electricity supply running during storms. It is why a state that receives abundant rainfall every year still appears so vulnerable to rain.
From Guwahati to Cachar, from busy urban neighbourhoods to remote villages, the pattern is depressingly familiar: a storm knocks down a tree, a wire snaps, a transformer trips or a pole is damaged, and an entire locality can be plunged into darkness. Restoration may take hours in the capital and considerably longer elsewhere. For rural consumers, particularly, the wait can become a test of endurance.
In Mohadebpur village under Dholai constituency in Cachar district, Rupai Das has stopped expecting quick restoration when the weather turns bad.
“When there is a storm, it is expected that power supply will be disconnected for two to three days,” Das told GPlus.
That statement alone captures the depth of Assam’s problem. A two- or three-day power cut following a storm is not being described as an extraordinary failure. It is being described as something residents have come to expect.
Das recalled an even more frustrating episode when electricity remained unavailable for an entire week.
“Even now, during small downpours, the power supply is erratic,” he said.
For people living in such areas, electricity is no longer merely an infrastructure service. It determines whether children can study at night, whether mobile phones can be charged, whether drinking water can be pumped, whether small businesses can operate and whether families can preserve food in refrigerators. When power disappears for days, the consequences extend far beyond inconvenience.
The situation is particularly concerning because these disruptions are occurring against a backdrop of increasing dependence on electricity. Homes increasingly rely on electric pumps, refrigerators, internet routers, mobile devices, cooling systems and other appliances. Businesses depend on uninterrupted power to run computers, machinery, refrigeration and communication systems. Yet the distribution network remains vulnerable to the very weather conditions that Assam experiences routinely.
Even Guwahati, the state’s administrative and commercial centre, is far from immune.
A recent hailstorm was enough to plunge several neighbourhoods into darkness. In Jyotikuchi, one resident said electricity disappeared shortly after midnight.
“From 12:15 AM there was no electricity. It was restored only around 5 AM, after we made multiple complaints to APDCL,” she said.
The bigger concern, however, was that the outage did not appear to be an isolated storm-related incident.
“Outages in our locality have been happening regularly at night, even without any storms,” she said.
That changes the nature of the debate. If electricity fails during severe storms, the damage may be understandable. But when consumers complain of frequent outages even during ordinary weather, the issue points towards deeper weaknesses in distribution infrastructure, maintenance and system resilience.
The Assam Power Distribution Company Limited (APDCL) itself acknowledges that storms can cause extensive damage.
“After a storm or similar weather situation, many connections are affected due to trees falling on wires, transformers getting damaged by high winds, and other weather-related issues,” a senior APDCL official told GPlus on condition of anonymity.
There is little dispute that storms can damage electricity infrastructure. The real issue is whether a distribution system designed for Assam’s climate should remain so exposed to those risks.
The official’s answer was blunt.
“Underground cable network is the only solution,” he said.
If underground cabling is the long-term answer, Assam has already spent years discussing it.
In 2019, APDCL announced an ambitious plan to replace Guwahati’s ageing overhead cables with an underground network. The proposed overhaul was estimated to cost around Rs. 3,000 crore. A detailed project report was prepared, with the stated objective of improving safety, reducing maintenance-related disruptions and modernising the city’s distribution system.
Yet years later, the transformation remains incomplete.
The irony is difficult to ignore. Guwahati is the political and financial nerve centre of Assam. If modernisation of its electricity network cannot be completed quickly, what confidence can consumers in remote districts have that their infrastructure will receive the same urgency?
An APDCL official said the project would depend on funding and that the underground network would initially focus on Guwahati before eventually expanding elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the state government has announced another major push.
The Assam Finance Minister has announced a Rs. 2,500-crore project for establishing an underground power cable network in Guwahati in a phased manner. Under the Revamped Distribution Sector Scheme, Rs. 200 crore has been earmarked for underground cabling along five major corridors, including Paltan Bazar Square; AT Road from Paltan Bazar to Bharalumukh; MG Road from Bharalumukh to Padumpukhuri; GS Road from Paltan Bazar to GMCH Road, including GMCH Road; and GS Road from Bhangagarh to the Dispur Secretariat.
The objective is not simply aesthetic.
Underground cabling is expected to improve power reliability, reduce the risk of accidents associated with exposed overhead wires and make the network more resilient to weather. It can also dramatically alter the visual character of a city increasingly burdened by a web of electricity and communication cables.
But announcements are not the same as execution.
For consumers, another project announcement does not restore electricity during the next storm. What they need is infrastructure capable of surviving the storm in the first place, and a restoration system capable of bringing power back rapidly when failures inevitably occur.
The state’s Aggregate Technical and Commercial (AT&C) losses add another layer to the problem. In Guwahati, the losses are estimated at around 6 to 7 per cent. Across Assam, the figure is substantially higher, at around 15 to 16 per cent.
“The losses are primarily because of overhead cables and outdated infrastructure,” the APDCL official said.
Those percentages may appear small when reduced to statistics, but they represent energy and revenue lost within a system that is already struggling to meet growing demand.
Assam’s peak electricity demand is around 2,400 MW, with Guwahati alone accounting for roughly 450 MW. As consumption rises, an inefficient distribution system becomes increasingly expensive to maintain.
And the problem is not evenly distributed.
Barak Valley continues to be among the worst affected regions, with significant portions of its electricity infrastructure dating back decades. Poles, wires and transformers in several locations show the effects of age and repeated exposure to extreme weather. APDCL says replacement and upgrading are being undertaken gradually, but residents say the pace does not match the urgency.
A resident from Silchar summed up the frustration sharply.
“Even in Guwahati, where the political and financial power centres are based, the underground cable project is pending for six years. What can be expected for rural areas?”
It is a question Assam cannot afford to brush aside.
There are, of course, legitimate challenges. Underground cabling is expensive. Digging through congested urban roads is disruptive. Existing utilities have to be mapped and relocated.
Drainage, water supply, telecommunications and other networks compete for limited underground space. In rural and forested areas, environmental and geographical considerations can make projects even more complicated.
But difficulty cannot become a permanent excuse for inaction.
Assam is not a state where extreme weather is an occasional surprise. Heavy rainfall, thunderstorms, hailstorms, floods and strong winds are recurring realities. Electricity infrastructure must therefore be designed around Assam’s climate rather than around an idealised weather scenario.
The climate question makes the urgency even greater.
As weather patterns become more unpredictable and extreme events become more frequent, infrastructure designed for yesterday’s climate will increasingly struggle to cope with tomorrow’s conditions. A distribution network that collapses whenever trees fall or strong winds blow is not resilient infrastructure. It is vulnerable infrastructure.
Storm-related blackouts are not unique to Assam. Every state experiences weather-induced power failures. The difference is how quickly utilities respond and how much of the network is protected against predictable risks.
There have been examples of APDCL responding quickly when circumstances demand it. During recent flood-related impacts in the Northeast, more than 300 electric poles were reportedly damaged in Nagaon district. Power was restored there within around 12 hours, demonstrating that rapid restoration is possible when manpower, logistics and coordination come together.
But such examples also raise another question: why cannot similar response times become the norm?
The consumer should not have to call repeatedly before a complaint is acted upon. Nor should residents have to rely on generators in nearby towns to charge their phones because their own village has been without electricity for days.
In many parts of rural Assam, however, this has become the reality.
A storm comes. Power goes. Complaints are registered. Residents wait. Temporary repairs are carried out. Electricity returns. Then another storm arrives, and the cycle begins again.
That is not resilience. It is repetition.
Assam’s electricity challenge is therefore not simply about generating more power. It is about ensuring that the power already available reaches consumers reliably.
For years, development discourse has celebrated highways, bridges, airports, flyovers and urban beautification. But the invisible infrastructure beneath a functioning economy matters just as much. Electricity distribution rarely attracts headlines when everything works. Its importance becomes painfully obvious only when everything stops.
For a student sitting for an examination, a shopkeeper trying to preserve stock, a hospital relying on equipment, a household trying to pump water or a small entrepreneur running a business from home, electricity reliability is not a luxury.
It is the foundation of daily life.
Assam now has a choice. It can continue spending money repairing the same vulnerable overhead infrastructure after every major storm, or it can invest aggressively in making the network more resilient.
The underground cabling plans are a step in that direction. But the success of those plans will ultimately be judged not by the size of the budget or the ambition of the announcement, but by what happens when the next storm arrives.
Will the lights remain on?
And if they go out, will they return in minutes, hours or days?
For Rupai Das in Mohadebpur, the answer has been painfully predictable.
“When there is a storm, it is expected that power supply will be disconnected for two to three days.”
That sentence should embarrass a state aspiring to rapid economic and urban transformation.
Because Assam cannot claim to be future-ready while its electricity network remains hostage to the weather.
It cannot talk about smart cities, digital services, industrial investment and modern urban infrastructure while citizens are still charging phones with generators because a thunderstorm knocked out a local feeder.
And it cannot call a two- or three-day blackout “normal” simply because residents have become accustomed to it.
Rain is not an unexpected visitor in Assam. Storms are not new. Wind is not a surprise. Trees falling during extreme weather may be unavoidable. Infrastructure collapsing every time they do should not be.
The state has identified the solution. It has prepared plans. It has announced funds. It has spoken about underground cables, modernisation and resilience.
Now comes the harder part: implementation.
Until that happens, dark clouds over Assam will continue to carry an unwelcome warning.
Not just that rain is coming, but that the lights may soon go out.