In 2008, the Indian government pledged to provide “power for all” by 2012. It’s already near mid 2011 and power cuts remain to be a big problem in India.
Twitter can’t solve the problem, but it could at least help to report the locations where power cuts occurred. Indians who experience power cuts are encouraged to tweet the time and location with a hashtag #powercutindia or #powercutsin.
For e.g. #powercutindia (street, city – location name/pincode) #from (time)#planned or #unplanned (if its a scheduled load shedding or unexpected outage). Twitter users are also encouraged to report with #powercutindia #back when power comes back.
These Twitter data will be captured on a Google Map, highlighting the areas where power cuts occurred. The Twitter-Google web mashup, as reported by Times of India, started when Shefaly Yogendra, a London-based investment consultant, saw a discussion on power cuts on her Twitter timeline and suggested to her friends, “Maybe you guys SHOULD tweet #powercut with location. The infographic [Google Map] will highlight the need for investment. To many people.”
Interestingly, Yogendra’s tweet inspired another Twitter user, @ajuonline, who quickly put up a web page to capture these tweeted data. The result is as shown above. The folks are serious about this project as they continue to work on a new infographic-like site to capture the data better and clearer. Without a doubt, Twitter remains to one of the most versatile web tools on the Internet.
This simple Google-Twitter web mashup clearly shows the areas which require investment to curb power cuts problems. Now, it is up to the Indian government to take actions. There is still time to fulfill the 2012 promise made to the people.
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