Hundreds of millions of people across India had no power on Tuesday in one of the world's worst ever power cuts. It was the second time in two days the country's power supply failed. The blackout caused huge problems for about half the country.

Hospitals were left in the dark, train passengers were stuck on trains, and the capital Delhi saw thousands of traffic jams after traffic lights stopped working. The outage has angered many Indians and damaged India's image as a world power.

India's government has talked a lot about updating the power system, but so far has failed to meet its promises. Power Minister Sushilkumar Shinde blamed the system collapse on some states using more than their share of electricity, but Uttar Pradesh's top energy official blamed old power lines.

Delhi shop assistant Anu Chopra, 21, said: "I can understand this happening once in a while but how can one allow such a thing to happen two days in a row? It just shows our [system] is in a complete mess."

Activities and a listening for this reading are at www.newsenglishlessons.com