The Squirrel Did It

It appears that a DMK government and power cuts are inseparable. When power disruptions suddenly became more frequent across Tamil Nadu after the DMK assumed charge, the Opposi­tion immediately carped: “We said so!” The reference was to the previous DMK government’s abysmal record of power cuts during 2006-11, which the AIADMK had contrasted with its own record of outage-free ­administration for a decade.

On the back foot, ­electricity minister V. Senthil Balaji—who had defected from AIADMK to AMMK to DMK—blamed the power cuts on squirrels short-circuiting the lines by running over non-insulated transmission cables and transformers. Also, the minister attributed the blackouts to poor maintenance of lines and transformers over the past year when AIADMK was in power. But it was his reference to the cheeky squirrels (called anil in Tamil) that triggered a spate of memes and jokes on social media. One wag even made the squirrel the centre of TNEB’s logo instead of high power transmission towers, while a few others suggested he should call himself “Anil” Balaji hereafter.

Not to be put down, minister Balaji ­recalled how a high court judge made spot visits to check if squirrels can cause power outages by running over transformers. The judge was hearing a case for compensation from the electricity board after a villager’s son died in an acc­ident caused by squirrels getting electrocuted on a transformer. “Even in the US squirrels are cited as a major cause of power ­disruptions,” Balaji argued.

Balaji’s discomfiture came as a huge ­relief for Sellur K. Raju, a minister in the previous AIADMK government who was ridiculed for floating thermocol sheets on a reservoir to reduce evaporation.

“I happily pass on the title of scientific minister to my brother Senthil Balaji,” quips Raju.