Modi's Energy Ambition Is About India's Freedom to Act: Krishan Rattan of Terra Invest

The Middle East war has reinforced my belief that energy security should be measured by a country’s ability to keep functioning when normal arrangements fail. A nation may have the financial resources to buy fuel and still face constraints on physical delivery. The capacity to respond depends on what it has built in advance.

The IEA’s 11 September 2026 Oil Market Report recorded more than 10 million barrels a day of Gulf output still shut in during August and 507 million barrels of global observed inventory draws since February. The scale of that disruption demonstrates why physical supply deserves a central place in national strategy.

At Terra Invest, the energy question I find most consequential is how a country increases its range of workable choices. Can essential freight continue moving? Can factories obtain the fuels and feedstocks they require? How long can critical services operate while supply is rerouted? Each answer depends on assets, equipment and operating knowledge that take time to develop.

Diversifying suppliers is valuable when it changes the underlying exposure. Several suppliers using the same route can leave a common point of failure. A refinery also needs fuel it can process and a logistics system capable of delivering it. Energy security needs to be understood at that level of physical detail, because that is where an apparently broad set of options can narrow during a crisis.

Electrification can change the structure of the exposure. If a useful activity can be powered from a broader domestic generation base, the country gains another way to supply it. The result depends on reliable networks, suitable equipment and power available at the required time. Building those capabilities together can reduce the number of national functions tied to a single imported fuel or trade route.

This is why India is right to treat new energy as an industrial opportunity, as the Modi government has set out to do. The National Green Hydrogen Mission includes domestic equipment manufacturing alongside production. The larger principle is important: India should accumulate the ability to build, maintain and improve the systems on which its energy future depends.

That means examining dependencies within the new system as carefully as those in the old one. A country gains resilience when it can obtain critical components, repair failures and expand capacity without relying on a single fragile arrangement. Domestic industry can contribute, as can multiple suppliers and well-designed partnerships. The objective is a credible alternative when an essential part of the system is unavailable.

Different measures serve different timescales. Strategic inventories buy time. Better logistics and efficiency reduce the energy required to perform a task. New generation and electrification change how that task is powered. Hydrogen can serve selected industrial functions that require molecules. I see value in an energy strategy that understands these differences and builds a set of capabilities that reinforce each other.

Sustained political direction matters because manufacturers and engineers learn through repeated execution. Equipment supply chains and operating expertise cannot be created on the morning of a disruption. A government willing to support a long industrial horizon helps make those investments conceivable. That is the strongest argument for India’s current energy direction, and it will apply to whichever government carries the work forward.

I also see a constructive future for India’s relationships with Gulf economies. Cooperation could deepen in new fuels, process engineering, manufacturing and the infrastructure that connects them. India can become a more capable industrial partner while continuing to trade. Greater domestic capacity gives it more to contribute to those partnerships and a broader foundation on which to build them.

The value of that preparation becomes clearest when an option disappears. An alternative route or source of supply can preserve production, protect essential services and give a government more time to negotiate. Those benefits are difficult to infer from the cheapest cargo available in an ordinary month.

The human cost of this conflict comes before any economic reading of it, and peace remains the outcome everyone should hope for. Its consequences for trade and industry simply underline the value of doing the difficult work of building resilience before the next emergency.

My view is that India should keep accelerating the construction of its future choices. Its energy agenda has the potential to leave the country with greater productive capacity and more freedom to act. That is an enduring national asset, and it is a reason to pursue the ambition with conviction.