A Kanpur resident, who recently returned to India from Ireland after over three years, opened up about the major challenges he is facing after returning to his motherland. Akash Tiwari serves as Manager of AI and Innovation Strategy at Coursera. In an X post, he said that life back home has forced him to deal with issues he never had to consider during his years abroad.
Tiwari listed several problems he has been facing since settling in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, highlighting three in particular: power cuts, rising AQI, and “mad” traffic and honking.
“Moving back to India has brought so many issues in my life that I never had to worry about in Ireland,” wrote Tiwari. The most prominent concern, he said, is the frequent power outages.
“I am in Kanpur, and on an average there’s a power cut for 4-5 hours everyday. We don’t have electricity even at the time of writing this,” he noted.
Tiwari contrasted this sharply with his experience in Ireland, where power disruptions were virtually nonexistent. “In Dublin, over my 3+ years of stay, electricity was cut for 15 mins, just once, to change my meter and I was notified about this cut 1 month in advance,” he recalled.
Beyond electricity woes, he mentioned two more frustrations: worsening air quality and chaotic traffic conditions. “Mad traffic and honking,” he wrote, adding that “These are man-made – artificially created issues. They shouldn’t be there at the first place AND people could focus on other important things in life.”
See the viral post here:
Moving back to India 🇮🇳 has brought so many issues in my life, that I never had to worry about in Ireland 🇮🇪
1. Electricity: I am in Kanpur, and on an average there’s a power cut for 4-5 hours everyday. We don’t have electricity even at the time of writing this. In Dublin, over…
— Akash Tiwari (@akashtiwari1007) December 6, 2025
The post prompted several users to chime in, garnering nearly two lakh views. “You chose a particularly difficult city to live in. If you had chosen a slightly modern city like Hyderabad Indore or Mysore the contrast would nt be so much,” a user wrote.
“It’s really sad that we have to beg the government to fix even basic things despite paying hefty taxes. Kanpur’s electricity problem is widely known and has been called out on this platform many times. That it’s still persisting is genuinely disappointing,” another user commented.
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“If you can’t move back to a tier 1 area in a tier 1 city not sure if it’s worth moving back. Nationalism is great, but living in these conditions sucks daily,” a third user reacted.
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