India, May 24 -- For residents of the Marol Gaothan in Andheri east, summer this year has meant living with frequent power cuts stretching from two to four hours, almost every alternate day, over the last month. With temperatures and humidity high, residents say routine life - from sleeping at night to running small businesses and storing food - has become exhausting.

The outages have hit the entire locality, with 150 to 160 homes frequently losing power. "There are also outages in the remaining 90 homes, but the situation is worse in our stretch," said Sachin Pereira, 46. Pereira said one of the outages lasted nearly six hours. "How can we survive in a summer like this?" he said.

The crisis in the gaothan is particularly severe but, in...