There is a ritual to every Gulf crisis and New Delhi has it memorised. The petroleum ministry issues reassurances. The finance ministry watches the current account. The Reserve Bank of India watches the rupee. And, then, if the crisis passes without catastrophe, everyone quietly returns to the status quo.
India imports nearly 88.6% of the crude oil it consumes. Coal provides roughly 70% of our power generation. The International Energy Agency projects that India will become the largest single driver of global oil demand growth between now and 2030 even as our Panchamrit pledges commit us to 500 GW of non-fossil capacity by that year. The
gap between these commitments and our structural reality is not a rounding error. The Russian crude arbitrage that once cushioned our import bill has largely closed. India has managed its exposure cleverly. But cleverness is not a substitute for architecture.
India's renewable expansion has been genuinely impressive, and it should accelerate. But the energy transition debate suffers from a category error: renewables are treated as a baseload solution when they are, by their physical nature, a variable supply solution. Solar and wind are excellent at covering peak demand during their productive windows. But the grid needs a reliable spine. Variable sources can complement it. They cannot be it.
India's hydroelectric potential is real but bounded by geography, ecology, and interstate disputes. It cannot anchor a national grid. This returns the conversation to nuclear. On a lifecycle carbon basis, nuclear is among the lowest-emission sources available. More critically, it is the only large-scale, zero-carbon that can reliably run continuously regardless of weather.
Critics will point to cost overruns, construction delays, and the unresolved question of waste disposal. Kudankulam ran years behind schedule. Large nuclear projects globally have struggled with budget discipline. But they are problems of execution. Every major infrastructure category India has scaled — highways, metro systems, digital payments — had its phase of dysfunction before it had its phase of performance. The answer to a governance problem is better governance, not the abandonment of the technology. Nuclear's costs are manageable. Its absence from a serious baseload strategy is not. India today operates 24 reactors with a combined capacity of approximately 8.78 GW, roughly 3% of installed electricity capacity. The government has set a target of 100 GW by 2047.
The legislative ground has shifted. The SHANTI Act dismantled the liability framework that had kept international vendors out of the Indian market. The commercial logjam has been broken.
Across the country, coal-based thermal units are being retired, leaving behind grid connectivity, access to cooling water, cleared industrial land, and workforces already oriented around power generation. These are sites waiting to be reassigned. BARC and NPCIL are developing the Bharat Small Modular Reactor that fits this profile precisely. Multiple units can be grouped at a single site to match the output of a larger plant. Replacing a coal unit with an SMR at the same location solves land acquisition and grid connectivity in a single move.
In 1973-74, faced with an oil shock that exposed the structural fragility of its energy system, the then French prime minister and EDF chairman made a commitment to transform France's energy architecture. Within a generation, France had one of the lowest carbon intensities in the industrialised world.
India has technical capability, institutional heritage in its nuclear establishment and, now, the legislative momentum. Every tanker rerouted in the Gulf, every basis point added to the Urals premium, every rupee lost to a crude import bill that should have been smaller by now — these are not acts of fate. They are the cost of a decision repeatedly deferred. The Gulf will convulse again. The question is whether India will still running the same script when it does.
Kavya Wadhwa writes on energy policy and strategic affairs