Blending Blues

Manoj Sharma pulled into a fuel station on Delhi's Outer Ring Road at least a week before he should have needed to.

- Himanshu Ojha

On the way over, he had watched the needle on his eight-year-old WagonR sink with unusual speed. The attendant, leaning on the pump, confirmed it was dispensing E20 petrol, a 20% ethanol blend. “Is my car designed for this?” Manoj asked. The man shrugged. “This is what we have now.”

More than 800km away, in Indore, a gig delivery rider Santosh Patidar noticed a similar dip. Covering the same routes and carrying the same weight each day, his monthly fuel spend climbed from 24 litres to over 30 litres since his city's pumps began dispensing E20.

In Karnataka’s cane-rich Bijapur district, sugarcane farmer Ramesh Goudar has reasons to view the transition differently: long-term ethanol supply contracts with a local distillery mean his cane fetches steady prices and on-time payments. For Ramesh, who once had to chase delayed payments from jaggery makers or sell cane at distress prices to local traders, the ethanol-linked contracts have brought a rare sense of stability.

India has pushed through one of the most aggressive ethanol-blending programmes in the world, hitting an average blend rate of 20% in 2025, five years ahead of its original target. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas touts it as a triumph of energy security, rural upliftment and environmental stewardship.

Now, it is considering raising the bar to 27% (E27). The achievement is held up as a model for other developing nations. In September, the Supreme Court declined to entertain a public interest litigation that challenged the rollout of 20% ethanol-blended petrol.

Beneath the celebratory rhetoric, however, lies a more complicated ledger: one of winners and losers, shifting agricultural patterns and a fleet of vehicles that may not be ready for what is coming.

The Policy Push