So Indians are flocking to electric cars. This, we are told, is a response to soaring fuel costs. A rational decision, surely, by a populace finally seeing the light of modernity.
But as with all such narratives, the devil is in the detail. The charging grid, that great enabler of the electric dream, remains a phantom. It exists in policy papers, in ministerial promises, in the occasional ceremonial installation.
But for the common man, it is an abstraction. The result: a nation of range anxiety, of cars that are more status symbol than functional transport. One is reminded of the late Roman Empire, where the grain dole kept the mob quiet but the aqueducts were falling into disrepair.
Or perhaps it is a more Victorian folly: the grand locomotive bought for the country estate, only to find the track ends at the gate. The Indian consumer, ever the pragmatist, will soon realise that a car without a charge is merely a very expensive paperweight. The government's role here is not merely to subsidise purchase but to build the invisible infrastructure.
Until then, the electric revolution remains a bourgeois fantasy, a desperate escape from petrol prices that will only lead to a more embarrassing reckoning.
