Why power-rich UP remains in thrall of a great darkness

Uttar Pradesh remains one of India's most poorly electrified states

The irony does not escape Divya Devi, a homemaker, who has lived in a mud hut for the past 11 years of marriage, in the darkness of Chopan Gaon, one of many “partly electrified” villages in the district of Sonbhadra in eastern Uttar Pradesh (UP). High above the hut she shares with her husband, a daily wage labourer, and four children, high-tension wires lace the landscape, a reminder that just 12 km away is the 1,288 megawatt (MW) Obra thermal power station, pumping out enough electricity to power the state capital of Lucknow–with enough left over to