Carbon Copying? Foreign Influence in the Forging of India’s Coal-Centric Energy Regime

How did the development models of early industrializers inform the energy-intensive paths taken by postcolonial states? Existing histories have tended to assume a simple process of technological diffusion or mimicry, but in practice apparent emulation was often far from straightforward or indiscriminate. This paper examines the fraught influence of foreign models at a pivotal moment in the forging of India’s coal-centric energy regime. Between 1971 and 1973 the Indian coal industry was nationalized, the crowning moment in what is popularly caricatured as the high noon of the country’s inward-looking dirigisme. For all the rhetoric of national self-sufficiency, though, the coal mining industry remained heavily dependent on foreign expertise, equipment, and finance. Throughout the 1970s, Indian experts traveled to inspect foreign coal mines and received approaches for technical aid and collaboration from foreign governments around the world. They found no single model to imitate. Instead, they sifted through competing models and offers to find a solution fitted to Indian conditions. Ultimately the model that won out was heavily influenced by the Soviet Union, but paradoxically sponsored by Western aid donors. Together, these unlikely partners helped to accelerate India’s shift onto a more carbon-intensive energy path, with devastating local ecological consequences. Yet these complex dynamics of influence and collaboration should not be mistaken for convergence on a single global model of fossil capitalism.