A huge voltage spike in Jaipur once fried two ACs, one microwave, and one small fridge among other electrical items. Cost my dad over 50k to replace/repair everything.
It sounds like there is enough power to go around but insufficient regulation and buffers and they are relying on non-variable power sources which cause either the frequency to vary or the voltage to go up and down when load changes.
Where I used to live (in Europe) this sometimes happened , which resulted in power outages, not damage due to safety precautions like sure protectors. But they fixed it when the windmills came along which are quite variable in power delivery and apparently upgraded the net to compensate for this. Haven't had a lot of outages since (changed from about 4-6 times a year to once every 4-6 years).
It sounds like a cheap political hit to me. Just give everyone power and they can say 'we did it' but since it is barely usable nothing has changed.
This is a huge problem even now