In a city with 15 hour power cuts, hundreds of people risk their lives to steal electricity. With the first female chief of the electricity company vowing to eliminate all illegal connections, the lines are drawn for a battle over electricity.—Anonymous
In Kanpur, India, an electricity thief provides Robin Hood style services to the poor in the face of day long power-cuts. Meanwhile the first female chief of the local electricity supply company has vowed to put an end to all illegal connections, for good. In a summer of crisis, both come to terms with India's energy poverty—Anonymous
Katiyabaaz is a story of Kanpur's electricity crisis, resulting in load-shedding. Power cuts of up to 15 hours a day, cause great trouble to residents and factories alike. This gap in supply and demand becomes the bedrock of local electricity thieves like Loha Singh, who provide illegal power connection to people, by plugging into official supply through live wires. However such free connection causes heavy financial losses to the power supply company, whose MD struggles to fight the menace of power theft, and local fixers. The film follows Loha Singh, an electricity thief, and Ritu Maheshwari an IAS official with Kanpur Electricity Supply Company.Ritu announces to the press that the distribution company's shortfalls have touched Rs 2000 crores and now the company is going to be strict on illegal theft of power.
Loha's mode of operation is simple. He short circuits the transformers, which forces the electric company to shut the power to restore the transformer. He then puts in all the illegal power theft wires in the area, before the power is switched back on. Ritu calls a meeting of all her Junior Engineers & threatens them to start removing illegal connections or she will take strict action.Loha Singh's view is that it is KESCO employees who encourage theft in the first place as they can then earn bribe money from illegal connections.
Ritu introduces many measures to improve employee morale, redress customer grievances & then embraces technology to improve customer experience (such as electronic bill payment kiosks). She also improves the PR image of KESCO in Kanpur & initiates proactive steps to inform customers about power outages, regular maintenance schedules etc.But its a vicious circle. Consumers steal electricity, which leads to lower revenues & higher costs for KESCO. It also damages equipment, which leads to higher power outages. Power outages effect small businesses. Out of 414 tanneries in Kanpur, only 200 are left. small businesses rely on expensive power from generators to run businesses, but that makes Kanpur one of the world's top 10 polluted cities. Small businesses consider Loha Singh their God as they cannot run their businesses & support worker families without stealing electricity.
Soon, it becomes a political issue when a local MLA, Irfan Solanki, threatens KESCO officials with riots if electricity is not provided to the city. All over Kanpur, local mobs start heckling linemen and other KESCO workers when transformers get damaged & electricity supply is interrupted.
KESCO initiates police action & takes even more tough measures to remove illegal connections. Irfan Solanki storms Ritu's office & threatens her on camera, for which he is jailed (for intimidating a public servant).Elections come around & electricity is a big issues with people starting from Manmohan Singh, Rahul Gandhi & Mayawati making their support for Kanpur known. Irfan Solanki wins the elections for the MLA post & in his first order gets Ritu Maheshwari transferred to a small town Pilibhit.
KESCO faces losses of 30% due to theft. Kanpur still faces electricity cuts of 16 hrs a day. 2 months after the film, north India faced the biggest failure of power grid across the world. 60 crore Indians went without power for 2 days, an event that made international headlines.
