Unless India can offer something strategic to China -- food, for instance -- China would have little reason to join efforts.
China-India energy cooperation in the oil and gas sector is "a beautiful academic idea," Waslekar said. "I don't see how it could work politically."
Aiyar is unbowed. He offers the idea of an Asian gas grid that would stretch from former Soviet republics like Kazakhstan to the Persian Gulf all the way to China.
Every chance he gets, he pushes the analogy of the European coal and gas community, the precursor to the European Union. He demands to know why China and India cannot create the Eastern equivalent?
"An Asian oil and gas community, which could eventually blossom as an Asian identity in the politics of the world," he said.
Of course, for now, a majority of Indians continue to live in the dark -- that is to say, without electricity -- and the most common fuels for Indian households remain among the worst for respiratory health: charcoal and animal dung.
RSS