Fractured/Earth

Part Four of our series on India’s energy mismanagement is just out.
The intro to the series had said that the BJP has, among other things, pushed fossil fuels (natural gas, especially) while choking renewables. The latter claim sounds counter-intuitive. India, after all, is adding fresh solar capacity. And so, Part Three flagged rising solar panel costs and tariffs thanks to state decisions and inaction. Part Four now looks at the squandered opportunity that is India’s RE PLI scheme. This one is, as you will see, a tale of bombast, cronyism and clownish incompetence.
This now leaves me with a larger point to make.
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What does this series tell us? 
Yes. Our energy sector is a mess. But that is not the whole story. 
There are two ways of reporting on any government. The press can be reflexive — reporting on events/decisions. The problem with this approach is that it will usually focus on more egregious developments. The other approach is to pick a beat and stay with it. One then sees the good and the bad and (hopefully) ends up with a more rounded sense of government functioning. In other words, if one were to assume that the patterns of decision-making seen in one beat extend across the government, one ends up with a window seat to government functioning itself.
As beats go, energy is central to the functioning of any economy, society and country. And so, assuming core functions get placed close to the heart of any government, it’s an excellent beat from where to observe government functioning. And so, this series is based on the close to 60 deep-dives spanning India’s energy sector I have filed over the last five years. The whole lot, here.
And so, what this series really tells us about is how India is being run. As the conclusion says:

“As things stand, India’s energy beat is a synecdoche. The mess one sees here is far from unique. Elsewhere in India too, despite the complexity hardcoded into each sector, the NDA has moved unmindfully, often self-servingly. In defence, overriding concerns, it has created a private-sector led military industrial complex. Pushing chosen businesses like Adani, it has turned capital-state relations in India into something predatory. Even such decisions, however, are just the tip of the iceberg. Look beyond the economy at society itself – health, education, ecology, etc – and the list of costs will lengthen further.”

The Wire and I should probably write one more concluding piece making just that point.