By Kedar Soman
I recently had a friend ask me. Why am I so passionate about electric vehicles?
I and plenty of people have repeatedly talked about environmental benefits of electric vehicles. They have been proven beyond doubt. EV's are damn good for environment. Just google Electric vehicle, global warming, pollution and you will find tons of articles and videos. So let's not repeat that again.
There is another angle to this crusade. For me, this is third battle of independence for India.
I and plenty of people have repeatedly talked about environmental benefits of electric vehicles. They have been proven beyond doubt. EV's are damn good for environment. Just google Electric vehicle, global warming, pollution and you will find tons of articles and videos. So let's not repeat that again.
There is another angle to this crusade. For me, this is third battle of independence for India.
First battle of independence was political independence. That was hands down most important. We achived it in 1947.
Second battle was the battle for food independence. Till 1970, we were highly dependent on other nation for something so critical as food. We were importing more than seven percent of food grains in 1960s at whatever price others were quoting. Because we had no choice. Buying food was not optional.
Then Lal Bahadur Shastri first and later Indira Gandhi played crucial role in the green revolution that paved the way of food independence for us. With introduction of high yield seeds, construction of some dams and providing easy access to credit to farmers through nationalized banks, we achieved it. Now we did not have to depend on anyone else. We did not have to worry about maitaining our supply chains for foods in case we were in war.
But we are still heavily relying on petroleum for our transportation and we are highly dependent on other countries for petroleum. We import 84% of the petroleum we consume. This is putting tremendous strain on our national finances. When there is 1$ rise in price of crude oil barrel, it puts strain of 1 billion $ on our finances. Also there is always worry of our enemy nations choking us by blocking our supply chains of oil.
Being so much dependent on petroleum providers limits our foreign policy choices. It sets us on backfoot in terms of our national security.
EVs can help us get there quickly. You can generate electricity pretty much from anything that moves, burns or shines. So there is no way anyone can stop us from making electricity. Ergo, there is no way anyone can stop us from keeping our vehicles moving if they are running on electricity. Not only Indian money will be fed back into Indian economy, but we will have total control our our transportation.
Thus being free of this oil dependency would go a long way in making India bigger, stronger and more prosperous. This is the third independence. We are all in it.
We are fighting the third battle of independence - Energy Independence.
Second battle was the battle for food independence. Till 1970, we were highly dependent on other nation for something so critical as food. We were importing more than seven percent of food grains in 1960s at whatever price others were quoting. Because we had no choice. Buying food was not optional.
Then Lal Bahadur Shastri first and later Indira Gandhi played crucial role in the green revolution that paved the way of food independence for us. With introduction of high yield seeds, construction of some dams and providing easy access to credit to farmers through nationalized banks, we achieved it. Now we did not have to depend on anyone else. We did not have to worry about maitaining our supply chains for foods in case we were in war.
But we are still heavily relying on petroleum for our transportation and we are highly dependent on other countries for petroleum. We import 84% of the petroleum we consume. This is putting tremendous strain on our national finances. When there is 1$ rise in price of crude oil barrel, it puts strain of 1 billion $ on our finances. Also there is always worry of our enemy nations choking us by blocking our supply chains of oil.
Being so much dependent on petroleum providers limits our foreign policy choices. It sets us on backfoot in terms of our national security.
EVs can help us get there quickly. You can generate electricity pretty much from anything that moves, burns or shines. So there is no way anyone can stop us from making electricity. Ergo, there is no way anyone can stop us from keeping our vehicles moving if they are running on electricity. Not only Indian money will be fed back into Indian economy, but we will have total control our our transportation.
Thus being free of this oil dependency would go a long way in making India bigger, stronger and more prosperous. This is the third independence. We are all in it.
We are fighting the third battle of independence - Energy Independence.