India’s Green Fuel Push needs a rethinking The Indian government champions the 20% ethanol blending target by 2025 as a masterstroke to slash crude oil import bills and offset Middle East volatility, a closer inspection reveals a perilous trade-off. The policy, meant to foster energy independence, is instead creating a precarious collision between food security, water resources, and environmental health. The glaring mathematical impossibility. To hit the 20% mark, India needs an astronomical 5.7 crore tonnes of sugarcane annually—a yield that current agricultural output simply cannot support. To bridge this gap, producers are pivoting to food grains like broken rice and corn. Yet, we do not even grow enough corn to meet domestic demand, forcing us to import it from Argentina. This counterintuitive move reduces our dependency on foreign oil only to replace it with a dependency on foreign food. The "eco-friendly" label attached to ethanol is scientifically misleading. Ethanol...
