Policy Discourses and Environmental Rationalities Underpinning India's Biofuel Programme

The use of renewable energy for transportation has received increasing support in environmental policy-making around the globe. Following this trend, the Indian government launched a large-scale biofuel programme in selected federal states, which involved the ecological rehabilitation of so-called wastelands with energy crops. Although met with considerable opposition from civil society actors, the programme was further expanded and a national biofuel policy was adopted. Employing a critical discourse approach, this study argues that the government's strategy to promote biofuels can be explained based on technocratic design principles that have underpinned previous public policies in India. A consolidated view of these factors indicates that the continued domination of the pro-biofuel discourse draws on a notion of weak ecological modernization. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment