Extensive power outages across India have left 600 million citizens without power.
The country, which has a population of over 1bn people, has suffered two devastating blackouts in as many days, leaving a dozen of its states entirely without electricity.
Hospitals are suffering, trains are not functioning and, in Kolkata in West Bengal, 200 coal miners have been trapped in mineshafts.
Confused passengers wait for trains to regain power in New Delhi, India
However, Nildari Roy, a senior official at the mines' operator, Eastern Coalfields Limited, allayed fears for the miners' lives, saying:"We are waiting for the restoration of power to bring them up through the lifts, but there is no threat to their lives or any reason to panic."
The country's government are in the process of rebooting the electrical grid but millions of its citizens have been seriously affected by the crash.
Disruption began on Monday when the northern portion of the country's electrical grid failed, bringing the transport system into chaos.
Roads were more congested than usual, with public transport severely impaired
Traffic lights, metro facilities and train stations are non-operational in almost half of the country, although the country's airports and hospitals are surviving on back-up generators.
Since Monday, the failures spread to the north-east and eastern areas of the country, with the country's power minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde, attributing the collapse to some states "overdrawing" too much electricity.
The massive failure is unlike anything the country has seen before, experts have said.
"Half the country is without power. It's a situation totally without precedent," the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry's Vivek Pandit said.