The politics of transition to electric mobility in India

Thesis

This study investigates how electric mobility in India is shaping and being shaped by the politics of urban mobility systems. Politics here is understood as the process by which trade-offs are resolved between various competing interests associated with urban mobility. The study situates itself within the academic literatures on sociotechnical transitions and transitions politics and employs concepts like sociotechnical imaginaries and policy entrepreneurship to conduct the investigation. The analysis is informed by a range of methods like process tracing and critical discourse analysis and relies on data from interviews and various secondary sources.

The study asks three research questions. Firstly, how, and why were some of the early national policies on road transport electrification in India created? Secondly, what sociotechnical imaginaries around electric mobility are being constructed within the national news media discourse? Thirdly, what changes is electrification triggering in the politics of urban bus systems in India, and how?

The study has the following main findings. Firstly, early national policies on electric mobility were created by set of policy entrepreneurs who discursively constructed landscape pressures for transition to electric mobility. To do this, they connected policy and political demands for growth in manufacturing with the tensions within the internal combustion engine vehicle (ICEV) regime concerning the ICEV system’s inability to help India become a global leader in manufacturing. Secondly, two contrasting imaginaries, one of ‘environmentally friendly automobility’ and another of ‘electrification of rickshaws for employment’ have been constructed and are circulating within the news media discourse. Thirdly, electrification is changing the politics of bus systems in ways that signal shifts towards improved bus systems with higher efficiency and service levels.

The overall contribution of this thesis is to demonstrate how the transition to electric road-based mobility in India is interwoven with the politics of urban mobility systems in various ways. This entanglement helps understand some key aspects of India’s EV transition trajectory so far and points towards implications for the future of urban (electric) mobility in India. The study contributes towards transitions scholarship by demonstrating novel ways in which transitions dynamics and the politics of transitions can unfold in geographies like India.

Authors: Dubey, G

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-6q4ykpqob
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: electric mobility; transition politics; India; sociotechnical transitions
• Subjects: Sociotechnical transitions