While the world is legitimately focused on the ongoing geo-economic and geopolitical upheavals, an epochal resource revolution is underway under our noses. India however is walking into this new order blindfolded. This shift is fundamentally re-engineering human civilisation, and could prove to be as consequential as the Industrial Revolution.It will transform who controls energy and resources, where global power resides, how national economies are organised and which nations retain their strategic autonomies. Countries that anticipate this transition early, and build capabilities to capitalise on its opportunities will gain a first-mover advantage.Those that fail to adapt risk being forced into structural dependencies, technological subordination and junior-partner status in the emerging world order. Given this, India has little luxury for comforting performances or self-deluding slogans (Viksit Bharat, Amrit Kaal, and Acche Din).Given superpowers are aggressively marshalling trillions to secure their energy independence, we must objectively confront the facts of this profound strategic transition, and accelerate capabilities to navigate it.The world’s remaining oil will be exhaustedFirstly, with 1.7 trillion barrels of proven reserves and a daily consumption rate exceeding 100 million barrels, the world’s remaining oil will be exhausted in roughly 50-57 years at current production levels. Given India imports over 85% of its crude requirements and possesses less than 0.3% of the world’s proven oil reserves, we need to objectively analyse how the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has prepared us to capitalise on these depleting resources.There are four things any government concerned with addressing this immediate macroeconomic vulnerability and protecting the national interest would have done – enhanced domestic crude production, secured oil supply from friendly nations at the lowest possible cost, created a massive stockpile of strategic oil reserves for a rainy day, and bolstered oil-refining capacity. Let us objectively gauge the BJP government’s track record on these four counts.With regard to India’s domestic crude production, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), the crown jewel of India’s energy empire was forced to acquire the debt-ridden Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation (GSPC) for Rs 7,738 crores and secure a 51% stake in Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (HPCL) for Rs 36,915 crores to help the BJP government pad-up its fiscal disinvestment targets. This drained ONGC’s war chest, loaded its balance sheet with debt and hampered its ability to invest in domestic oil and gas exploration. Consequently, India’s domestic crude production has steadily declined, meeting only 13% of domestic consumption, while our crude import dependency has perilously ballooned.Similarly, Iran has historically stood as India’s structural anchor in West Asia, reliably supplying around 14% of our total crude imports. When Washington slapped punishing sanctions on Tehran in 2011-’12 and demanded compliance, Prime minister Manmohan Singh withstood external pressure and continued Iranian oil imports in the national interest. In stark contrast, when the BJP government faced a similar choice in 2018 (when the first Trump administration reimposed sanctions), it unfathomably sacrificed India’s right to purchase discounted oil from Iran (in May 2019) and Venezuela (in 2020).Modi’s endorsement of Netanyahu’s alienated strategic ally TehranThis was further compounded by prime minister Modi’s political endorsement of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war against Iran (a conflict that is deeply entwined with the electoral compulsions of his Likud party ahead of Israel’s national elections). In doing so, not only did he alienate Tehran (with whom India shares historical, civilisational and strategic ties), but also destroyed the possibility of a steady flow of energy supplies during the West Asian war.Likewise, the Modi government also undermined India’s energy supplies from Russia, which at one stage accounted for 40% of India’s crude imports and was also paid for partly in Indian rupees. The Modi government significantly reduced import of discounted Russian oil after the United States of America (USA) imposed tariffs. Consequently, imports fell to a 44-month low in January 2026, representing a nearly 35% year-over-year reduction in volume. Even though Washington granted India an Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions waiver (because of which India’s Russian crude imports mushroomed to 2.8 million barrels per day in July 2026), it was primarily designed to stabilise global energy markets (to compensate for supply chain disruptions because of instability in the Strait of Hormuz).However, the waiver expired in April 2026 and the bipartisan Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026 threatens to slap 100% tariffs on nations importing oil from Russia. Given this, India once again finds itself staring at acute energy insecurity (which has been exacerbated because of the maritime blockade on Saudi-linked shipping from the Bab al-Mandab strait, the attacks on the Saudi East-West pipeline which has knocked out about 4%–5% of global oil supply and attacks on critical Russian oil terminals and refineries which have reduced crude oil production to a 17-year low).BJP govt neglected the expansion of India’s strategic oil reservesSeparately, for over a decade, the Modi government has inexplicably neglected the expansion of India’s strategic oil reserves. While the Dr Manmohan Singh government built India’s core strategic petroleum reserve capacity to 33 million metric tonnes (or 39 million barrels), that figure has remained frozen since then. Building and filling out expanded storage would have cost roughly Rs 30,000 crores (a fraction of the Rs 38.89 lakh crores which the BJP government earned from fuel taxes and cesses in the last decade).Contrast this with China, which has built a massive cushion of 900 million to 1.4 billion barrels of strategic crude reserves (which it has also complemented with unfettered, diversified pipeline access to Russian, Iranian, and Central Asian hydrocarbons). The domestic ledger of this inertia is damning. Despite the 2015 Urja Sangam pledge to drop India’s oil import dependency to 67% by 2022, dependency instead climbed from 77.6% in 2014 to nearly 89% today. Consequently, our annual oil import bill is Rs 13 lakh crore (USD 144 billion) today.Downstream infrastructure tells a similar story. Even though the Modi government promised to double refining capacity to 450 million metric tonnes per annum (MMTPA) by 2030, today India has only 258 MMTPA refining capacity (with refining capacity before 2014 already at 215 MMTPA). Essentially, over the past 12 years, the Modi government has added only about 43 MMTPA of refining capacity. Caught between hollow rhetoric and systemic underinvestment, India is left structurally exposed at precisely the moment when global supply lines are strained.Secondly, although human civilisation has run on perishable energy (fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas) for the last two centuries, these energy sources are finite, rapidly depleting and subject to geopolitical volatility. Therefore some nations are aggressively investing in perennial sources of energy (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, nuclear and fusion energy). There is a possibility that finding new sources of oil could offer temporary relief by bolstering the 1.7 trillion barrels of proven crude oil reserves. Melting polar-ice (especially in the Arctic) could for instance open access to an estimated 90 billion barrels of oil.Similarly, deep-sea and deepwater drilling could unlock further reserves, potentially tapping into the world’s remaining undiscovered hydrocarbon resources (like India’s Samudra Manthan Mission, that hopes to add 600 Million Metric Tonnes of Oil Equivalent). But these are hardly durable solutions. Apart from the extreme operating costs and ecological risks of extracting oil from the most inhospitable environments, this would unleash a fresh round of geopolitical contestation between Russia, the United States of America (USA), Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, China and other nations including India. More fundamentally, even the additional oil from the Arctic would last only about two and a half years (assuming consumption rates don’t increase). Essentially, we would be buying only a few years of additional supply, while the world becomes even more volatile. This is invariably going to rewire how nations engage with each other, forcing them to resort even more to primordial rules of statecraft.Given this inevitable reality, nations are rapidly moving away from an extraction economy (mining a depleting inventory of fossil fuels) toward a harvest and capture economy (harnessing infinite natural flows). For example, despite a 4‑billion‑barrel reserve (and continued oil and gas imports from Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan) China has made aggressive investments in solar (1288 gigawatts [GW]), wind (650 GW), hydropower (426-GW), and nuclear energy (63.4 GW) which cumulatively supply 42% of its energy.In parallel, the USA boasts of 415 million barrels in its Strategic Petroleum Reserve and 4.68 trillion cubic feet of natural gas reserves. Despite that, it has also made aggressive investments to bolster its solar capacity (160-175 GW), wind energy (150 GW), hydropower (102 GW) and nuclear power (97-98 GW), which cumulatively supply 30% of USA’s energy. Taken together, both USA and China seem relatively immune to ongoing (and future) global energy disruptions.However, keeping in mind the inherently intermittent nature of wind, solar and hydro energy sources, both USA and China are aggressively experimenting with, and investing in nuclear fusion. Widely hailed as the holy grail of energy, it promises a virtually limitless, clean energy source without the meltdown risks associated with traditional nuclear fission. What nuclear fusion does is try to replicate the power of the sun by leveraging massive machines (like magnetic confinement tokamaks and laser-driven inertial confinement systems) to create extreme temperatures to force light atomic nuclei (like hydrogen isotopes) to fuse into heavier elements, thereby releasing staggering amounts of energy.US and China are far aheadWhile USA’s government-funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory is complemented by a booming private fusion sector, China is operating advanced experimental tokamaks (such as the EAST reactor). Both have cracked the mechanics of kickstarting a fusion reaction. What they are striving to do is control and sustain this reaction for longer periods (which is essentially an engineering challenge). It is only a matter of time before someone gets it right.For example, Helion Energy, the US fusion start-up, is so confident in its technology that it has signed a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity from its planned Orion fusion plant by 2033. Only time will tell whether Helion is able to overcome the formidable challenges of plasma control and create a reliable, grid-scale power plant. But its ambition (and underlying strategic aspiration) is clear.Interestingly, anticipating this reality and its potential benefits for India’s energy security, the Rajiv Gandhi government built the Institute for Plasma Research (IPR) under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) in 1986, which designed and built its first tokamak ADITYA by 1989. The Dr Manmohan Singh government complemented this by making India into a full official partner in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project in 2005 (the world’s largest magnetic confinement plasma physics experiment). This was also followed by the Steady State Superconducting Tokamak (SST-1), which achieved its first plasma operation in 2013.The failure to operationalise fusionAnd yet, despite entering the fusion race decades ago (which gave India a massive strategic head-start), the BJP government has failed to convert that early advantage into a decisive national capability. In this vacuum, a nascent Indian private fusion ecosystem is beginning to emerge, with ventures such as Bengaluru-based Pranos Fusion and Haryana-based Anubal Fusion seeking to push frontiers. They would find it relatively easier than most nations given India has ample scientific talent and institutional capacity (primarily bequeathed by previous Congress governments) to support such endeavours. However, this also raises serious structural questions. Despite having a massive head-start, scientific talent, institutional capabilities, and faced with geopolitical urgency, why did the BJP government fail to operationalise fusion as a potential pillar of energy security and national power for the last 12 years?Thirdly, nations are also aggressively investing in nuclear plants. China has launched the world’s most aggressive nuclear expansion programme, operationalising 40 to 50 new nuclear reactors online over the last 20 years (bringing its total operational reactors to 64, which collectively provide 4.8% of China’s total electricity generation). The USA, which already has 94 nuclear reactors (generating 18% of the country’s total electricity), it is currently building two more. India in contrast has 24 operational reactors, which generate about 3% of India’s total electricity.Even though India has made strides in solar (150 GW), wind (56 GW), and hydro (51 GW), nuclear is the only proven, scalable zero-emission baseload power which can keep our grid stable (without burning millions of tons of coal as backup) and meet our growing energy demands. That is why India needs to rapidly scale up from the 24 operational reactors we have, retrofit retiring coal plants with nuclear cores, and also invest in Small Modular Reactors (SMRs). Again, even though the BJP vilifies prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, it is his strategic foresight that ensured that India’s nuclear strategy was structured around a unique Three-Stage Nuclear Power Programme (designed by Homi Bhabha) which overcomes our limited uranium resources (less than 2% of the global reserves) and leverages our massive reserves of Thorium (around 25% of global reserves).Likewise, the Dr Manmohan Singh government commissioned the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR) at Kalpakkam, Tamil Nadu in 2004 and signed the Indo-US nuclear deal. The latter opened up imports which allowed us to build a stockpile of uranium. This was necessary because Thorium-232 needs fissile material to be transmuted into Uranium-233 (needed for undergoing nuclear fission).Direct consequence of the BJP govt’s lack of strategic imaginationGiven global uranium supply has come under severe structural strain, and given that Clean Core Thorium Energy (an American company) has successfully developed an advanced nuclear fuel composite (a blend of Thorium with High-Assay, Low-Enriched Uranium [HALEU]), India is well poised to become a serious nuclear power (primarily because of the foundations laid by previous governments). We can even experiment with decentralising the production of clean energy, and unlock private-sector participation (through SMRs).As argued before, these failures are not accidents of circumstance. They are the direct consequence of the BJP government’s profound lack of strategic imagination. Over the past decade, its track record has been a masterclass in prioritising hollow symbolism over substance (by effecting a gleichschaltung on India’s foreign policy and national security apparatus to project Prime Minister Narendra Modi). Given global powers are marshalling public capital, building enabling regulatory frameworks, and catalysing both the public and private sectors to securing their energy sovereignty, it is critical that future governments recalibrate our energy security policy.On one hand, we will need to balance our relationships with US, Iran, Venezuela, Russia, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia. This is not just to secure supply lines for regular domestic consumption, but also to aggressively scale up our strategic reserves. This requires patient relationship-building with key political stakeholders (including the diplomatic ability to help stakeholders understand our compulsions), and concerted state-led investment to rapidly expand national strategic petroleum reserves as well as refining capacities.On the other hand, mitigating the exhaustion of fossil fuel, India needs to accelerate capital commitments to next-generation energy base-loads. This includes scaling up advanced nuclear fuel cycles (such as Thorium-HALEU integrations) and investments in nuclear fusion research. It has to be State-led because the 2006 Nuclear Deal granted us a negotiated exemption to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is also seeking a Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) membership (and therefore, allowing private companies to produce fuel in the HALEU band would perforce invite global sanctions). Only if the Indian State takes the lead to operationalise all of these can we ensure India’s energy sovereignty (and therefore strategic autonomy).Finally, the political and bureaucratic class needs to realise that we simply cannot bargain for a superpower’s destiny with a middleman’s mindset. It is not enough to merely say the right thing at the right time (as prime minister Modi is doing on multiple international fora). It is critical to do the right thing at the right time. That is why India needs dreamers, disruptors and ruthless pragmatists who can align India’s economic, technological, diplomatic, military, institutional and social capabilities to comprehensively reshape both India’s software (culture, values and attitudes) and hardware (economy, institutions and systems). Only then can we imagine the (currently) unimaginable and achieve the impossible.Pushparaj Deshpande is Samruddha Bharat Foundation’s Director & Editor of The Great Indian Manthan (Penguin).