Thread by @shenoyn

Hello dear TL
I don't know how many of you run small scale manufacturing companies. Probably not too many, given how cheerful and chirpy my TL usually is. Because times are tough. First there was the lockdown, which forced us to keep factories closed.

Closely followed by the sharp rise in the prices of everything. Steel, plastics, non ferrous metals, every imported thing, became suddenly and dramatically more expensive. Like 1.5x to 2x. This knocked the stuffing out of sales because the proletariat was broke because of covid

Naturally, all eyes turned to the government. Surely, they'd do everything within their powers to help out a sector which employs some 6 crore people (and supports another 20 or so crore people indirectly). Well, it turned out they weren't able to. Not much anyway.

Fair enough. The pandemic was a challenge like no other. And anyway, the things government is doing, infrastructure for example, will take a few years to really show up in the bottom-line. But today, i found out first hand how devastatingly stupid it can be.

Well, to be fair, not the government really but the Maharastra State Electricity Distribution Co. I feel compelled to tag @CMDMSEDCL because it's just possible we've been a victim of some petty bribe seeking, but who knows, it could be policy as well.
So here's what happened:

We had an electricity bill which due for payment yesterday. Just due. Not overdue or anything. For some reason, not lack of money (but which could well have been. Times are hard), we couldn't do yesterday. Well, this morning, they landed up and disconnected the power

Our employees called me and told me they're here to disconnect our power, please tell them not to. I spoke to the man. He said I will give you fifteen minutes. If the payment doesn't happen by then, I'm disconnecting it.
I couldn't, because I had to get to office and do it

By the time I did that, my fifteen minutes were up. The power was cut. Production was halted. Then we spent a hour or two looking for the guy. Finally found him. Had to pay him Rs. 500 towards reconnection charges. He turned the power on. We had lost a good 4 hours of production

I was seething. I wanted to rant at someone. Fine encouragement this is for industry, i wanted to tell him. No notice, nothing. Just land up and shut off power. But my workers told me jaane do na sahab. Waise bhi char char ghante power kat rahta hai. So, dear @CMDMSEDCL ,

I am not going to rant. Just wanted to share an opinion with you. This might not be the best way to encourage industry. We might not be very valuable, we small industry guys, but we do employ people. And it's been a brutal couple of years. We haven't folded up yet but it won't

take all that much to make us fold up. A few hours of power cut might not do it, but it will definitely help us along in that direction