The war in the Gulf has exposed India's underbelly, this huge crisis on the shortage of petroleum products only exposes how energy insecure the country remains.
If only someone had heeded to the plaintive calls made two decades ago by India's visionary "People's President" APJ Abdul Kalam. Two decades on, India is still at the mercy of Gulf oil.
Nearly two decades ago, India's "missile man" and then President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, laid out an audacious national mission, energy security by 2020, leading to energy independence by 2030. He framed it not as an engineering target alone, but as a strategic necessity: "Energy Independence is the lifeline of a nation."
Kalam's prescription, spelt out in his address at the South Asian Conference on Renewable Energy in New Delhi in April 2006, was clear-eyed about geopolitics, economics and technology. He warned that fossil-based oil, coal and gas reserves would not last forever, and that the "unpredictable increase in the cost of oil" should compel India to act decisively.
He reminded the country that he had already elevated the idea of energy independence in his Independence Day Eve address on August 15, 2005, and sharpened it into a deadline-driven national agenda: "Energy Independence has to be our nation's first and highest priority. Our target is to achieve Energy Security by 2020 leading to Energy Independence by 2030 and beyond."
Yet, as India watches a fresh conflagration in West Asia, involving the United States and Israel striking Iran and retaliatory disruptions across the Gulf, the fragility of India's energy lifelines has returned to centre stage. International energy markets have been rattled by the risk to Gulf infrastructure and shipping, with tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for a significant share of global seaborne oil trade, reportedly nearing a standstill at points, pushing volatility into prices and freight.
For India, which remains heavily import-dependent, the renewed instability is not just a distant headline; it directly threatens household fuel availability, industrial productivity, and the country's broader fiscal stability.
Kalam's "navigable route" for India's energy bouquet
Kalam's vision did not hinge on a single silver bullet. Instead, he urged a multi-route energy pathway, a diversified national "bouquet" with a navigable roadmap, one that could withstand shocks and reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels.
In his words, India's power system needed a structural shift, with renewables rising from a marginal role to a quarter of the mix: "the power generated through renewable energy technologies has to be increased to 25% against the present 5%", he said this is 2006.
Today India renewable energy production of non-fossil power installed capacity has reached 262.74 GW in November 2025, which is 51.5% of the total installed electricity capacity in the country which was 509.64 GW. A huge achievement, but far from giving India the much needed energy independence.
Kalam projected that to meet development targets, India's power generating capacity would need to rise dramatically - to 400,000 MW by 2030 from about 130,000 MW then. He also broke down the broad architecture of that growth: additional hydel potential including river interlinking contributions, a strong nuclear backbone, and large-scale solar farms delivering tens of thousands of megawatts. The strategic goal, Kalam argued, was to minimise fossil fuel imports while ensuring secure access, and to maximise hydro, nuclear and renewables alongside conventional thermal power.
Kalam's plan was unusually specific for a presidential speech. He spoke of hydel additions, large solar farms, and a nuclear ramp-up to 50,000 MW by 2030. And he did not stop at today's technologies. He pushed India's scientific establishment to chase disruptive breakthroughs, such as carbon nanotube (CNT) based photovoltaic cells, arguing that the efficiency leap could make solar truly competitive at scale.
A war exposes the gap between aspiration and security
Fast forward to March 2026, and the irony is stark. India has expanded electricity generation, built vast renewable capacity, and accelerated solar installations. Yet energy security, particularly in liquid fuels and gas, still remains exposed to geopolitical shocks.
Recent reporting and government statements underline the scale of dependence: India imports roughly about 88% of its crude oil and around about half of its natural gas, a structural vulnerability when Gulf shipping lanes are threatened. Another account citing parliamentary information put crude import dependence at around 88.6%.
The current Gulf conflict has amplified the risk premium.
Analysts tracking the crisis have warned about disruptions to oil and LNG flows through Hormuz, with consequences for price spikes, shipping insurance costs, and supply delays especially for Asian importers. In short, the war has exposed precisely the insecurity Kalam wanted India to engineer out of its future.
What India has achieved: power capacity rises, solar rockets
In electricity, India's installed base has grown into a global-scale system. Official reports show that India's total installed electricity capacity is now around 520 GW (520,510 MW range, as of early 2026). That number is a marker of the country's rising demand, industrial growth and electrification, and it also reflects how the energy transition is being built on top of a massive, complex grid.
Where India has moved decisively, arguably in the spirit of Kalam's call, is solar energy. The Ministry of New and Renewable Energy's cumulative physical progress data (as of 28 February 2026) puts India's solar installed capacity at about 143.60 GW, with ground-mounted projects around 109.50 GW and rooftop solar around 24.86 GW. This solar surge is not cosmetic; it signals that India has turned sunlight into an industrial-scale resource, reshaping the electricity mix and reducing marginal dependence on imported fuels for power generation.
Kalam had urged a major shift away from fossil dependence, insisting that renewables must rise from a minor share to a strategic pillar. India's solar ramp-up suggests that part of that blueprint is being executed, faster than many expected a decade ago, even as other parts of the national energy-security puzzle remain incomplete.
The SHANTI Act: a nuclear bet on 100 GW by 2047
That is where the next big policy lever enters: nuclear energy. Kalam placed nuclear power at the core of India's long-term energy security, arguing for capacity growth and for pursuing thorium-based reactors as a strategic advantage given India's reserves.
Now, the Sustainable Harnessing and Advancement of Nuclear Energy for Transforming India (SHANTI) Act, 2025 seeks to modernise India's nuclear framework and explicitly anchors a long-range ambition: 100 GW of nuclear capacity by 2047.
In other words, even as Kalam's 2020 energy security deadline slipped away, the country is now attempting a longer, deeper structural correction: build a clean baseload backbone that can complement solar and wind and reduce exposure to imported fossil fuels.
A dream unfinished, yet still actionable
Kalam's speeches read today like both prophecy and provocation. He wanted India to treat energy as a sovereignty question, something that powers prosperity and protects peace. He spoke of solar missions for rural households, of technology breakthroughs, of nuclear scale-up, of biofuels for transport, each strand reducing dependence and creating resilience.
But the uncomfortable reality is that the most geopolitically sensitive part of India's energy system, oil and gas, remains import-heavy, and therefore hostage to maritime chokepoints and external crises. The West Asia war has simply made that dependency visible again, in the language of disrupted routes, freight premiums and inflation fears.
At the same time, India's achievements, 520 GW installed power capacity and 143.6 GW solar, show that when the state sets a mission and aligns industry and finance, scale is possible. The SHANTI Act's 100 GW by 2047 nuclear ambition is another attempt at such a mission.
Kalam's message from 2006 still rings: make energy independence the "first and highest priority." If the Gulf war has delivered any strategic lesson, it is that energy security cannot be wished into existence, it must be built, diversified, and defended by design, atom by atom, molecule by molecule and efficiently harvesting photon by photon.
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