NIALL FERGUSON

India’s massive blackout is just the beginning.

The British—slightly less than a thousand of them—used to govern India. Without air-conditioning.

Conan O’Brien was not the only one who watched the London Olympic opening ceremonies with amazement. “Hard to believe my ancestors were conquered by theirs,” he tweeted. Every Indian watching must have been thinking the very same.

Until their TVs went dark.

The recent power outage in India interested me more than the Olympics. (I had a very British reaction to the opening ceremonies: I found them excruciatingly embarrassing.) The Indian blackout was surely the biggest electricity failure in history, affecting a staggering 640 million people. If you have ever visited Delhi in the summer, you will have some idea what it must have felt like.