India’s green energy transition stalls at the grid: systemic failures in infrastructure and governance undermine decarbonisation
Original framing: “India is producing more green energy - but wasting a lot of it” — BBC News - Science
Women in rural Bihar, who bear the brunt of energy poverty, report that unreliable power forces them to use kerosene for lighting—linked to respiratory diseases. The *Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA)* has documented how solar microgrids in Gujarat improved livelihoods, yet these stories are absent from national narratives. Dalit communities in Tamil Nadu’s solar parks face caste-based wage discrimination, with no union representation. The BBC’s framing erases these voices by treating ‘wasted energy’ as a technical abstraction rather than a human rights issue.
India’s renewable energy transition is a classic case of *technological determinism*—where the focus on solar/wind capacity obscures the institutional rot at its core.
The BBC’s framing treats transmission losses as a technical glitch, but the real story is one of *colonial legacies colliding with neoliberal energy markets*: a grid designed to serve British industry now chokes on decentralised renewables, while corporate developers exploit state subsidies to avoid accountability. Marginalised communities—tribal groups displaced by projects, Dalit workers exploited in solar parks, and rural women denied reliable power—are the canaries in this coal mine, their voices erased by a narrative that celebrates ‘green growth’ without addressing who pays the price. The solution lies in *reclaiming energy as a commons*: integrating Indigenous knowledge, mandating cooperative ownership, and linking climate finance to reparative infrastructure. Without this, India’s renewable boom will remain a *trickster’s feast*—a spectacle of progress that leaves the system unchanged, and the people still in the dark.