Half of India Loses Power, Business and Commerce Crippled

About 600 million people lost power in India on Tuesday when the country's northern and eastern electricity grids failed, crippling the country for a second consecutive day.

The outage stopped hundreds of trains in their tracks, darkened traffic lights, shuttered the Delhi Metro and left nearly everyone—the police, water utilities, private businesses and citizens—without electricity. About half of India's population of 1.2 billion people was without power.

"We seem to have plunged into another power failure, and the reasons why are not at all clear," said Gopal K. Saxena, the chief executive of BSES, an electric company that services South Delhi.