Blending of Practices: A Study of Selected Biofuels Complex in India

Abstract

Biofuels have caught the attention of the world as a source of renewable energy which can provide energy security, advance rural development, mitigate climate change, and foster international trade. India developed the National Mission on Biodiesel (NMB) as a rural development policy option to produce biodiesel from Jatropha and promoted it as a pro-poor and pro-growth initiative. The study will attempt to examine the emergence, trajectory, and the consequences of the NMB by examining the case of a public sector research institute involvement in developing and disseminating the technologies for sustainable energy in India. The study will also locate the trajectory of an object, which has been constructed into an industrial crop from a bush of semi-arid regions. What are the epistemic practices adopted by various actors in this construction? How is such knowledge diffused from laboratory to farmland? And, where does new cultivation get (the) space? These research questions will be examined within the theoretical framework of Science and Technology Studies (STS); where social, political, economic, cultural, institutional, ideological, etc. factors will account for production of knowledge, its accessibility, and application. To address the research objectives both primary and secondary sources has been used. The primary data is obtained by deploying in-depth interviews of the scientific community and the sources of secondary data viz. academic journals, books, policy documents.