Government of India has once again increased the price of petrol, which obviously indicates that it is clueless about the strategies for maintaining the price of petrol and other petroleum fuel in India.
The Indian chemical Industries should realize that such conditions only point to the grim ground realities and it would be a calculated risk to build the future chemical industries in India largely based on petro chemical feedstock. There is urgent need to focus growth plans of chemical industries in India on more appropriate lines.
With regard to petroleum based fuel, there have been number of suggestions to the Government of India in recent times, to develop alternative and appropriate fuel sources for the country. Obviously, the jatropha bio fuel and algae based bio fuel are some of the areas, where there are huge futuristic possibilities. But the challenge of exploiting these appropriate and promising resources can be achieved, only by initiating and implementing short term and long term strategic plans with well conceived research and development programmes and schedules, in a sustained manner.
It is sad that the Government of India has failed to give any lead to the country or frame appropriate policy measures in tackling the impending fuel crisis. As a result, the country remains helpless in tackling this grave problem of ever increasing petroleum price scenario.
As a traditional agro based economy, India has to necessarily look inward to work out it’s appropriate development strategy, instead of copying the pattern of growth of developed countries and linking the future of Indian chemical industries to petro based sector.
India has a lot to learn from Brazil, which has been relentlessly exploiting its potential for producing sugar cane for developing ethanol based fuel and ethanol based derivative chemicals. While India need not adopt the exact plans that Brazil has charted for itself, certainly the initiative of Brazil in finding appropriate growth model should be an eye opener and bench mark for India.
There is strong case to shift the priorities and reorient the future growth profile of Indian chemical industries based on agro chemicals rather than petro chemicals. Combination of agro chemical industries with agricultural industry would be the elegant method of combining the twin advantages to meet the larger need of India.
India being a tropical country with different climatic zones, it has been possible to cultivate varieties of agricultural crops in the country . There are possibilities of producing many value added chemical products from the agricultural crops in a viable manner, which can compete with the synthetic chemicals now producied from petroleum based feedstock.
Apart from the increase in the cost of production and price of petro chemical products, environmental issues arising out of synthetic chemicals have also been a matter of grave concern for user sector around the world. Under the circumstances, the agro chemicals produced from natural sources are bound to be viewed as eco friendly, apart from being appropriate to the India’s needs and strength.
Unfortunately, many of the potential valued based agro chemicals are being produced in the country only in small quantity or not at all produced in India at present, which amount to missing investment opportunities in the field.
India still have huge potentials for producing many chemicals based on agro products such as cane molasses, maize /tapiaco / starch , castor etc. In the case to several molasses / starch based chemicals, India entirely imports its requirement of derivative products such as L-lysine, glutamic acid, citric acid etc.
In the case of herbsmedicinal plants, India has huge traditional knowledge and enormous opportunities. Several herbal drugs have been developed for the difficult to treat diseases such as cancer, jaundice etc. based on Indian herbs. Unfortunately, Indian herbal industry is now at the cross roads and is lacking integrated herbal management practices that combine agricultural management, technology practices, application development, product certification and trading. While a lot of discussions have taken place in governmental / non governmental level about the potentials for exploiting the investment opportunities in the herbal sector, they have not been translated into practice adequately.
There are of course, other valuable agricultural products such as jojoba, jatropha, algae etc where India has unique tropical advantages but nothing worthwhile have been achieved so far. Obviously, efforts towards developing and optimizing the technology for the production of agro chemicals appropriate to the Indian conditions, have not been put forth adequately.
Certainly, it is evident that there is lack of focus in requisite measures to boost agro chemicals production in India, which can prove costly in the coming years in view of the uncertainties associated with the petro chemical products.
The Indian chemical Industries should realize that such conditions only point to the grim ground realities and it would be a calculated risk to build the future chemical industries in India largely based on petro chemical feedstock. There is urgent need to focus growth plans of chemical industries in India on more appropriate lines.
With regard to petroleum based fuel, there have been number of suggestions to the Government of India in recent times, to develop alternative and appropriate fuel sources for the country. Obviously, the jatropha bio fuel and algae based bio fuel are some of the areas, where there are huge futuristic possibilities. But the challenge of exploiting these appropriate and promising resources can be achieved, only by initiating and implementing short term and long term strategic plans with well conceived research and development programmes and schedules, in a sustained manner.
It is sad that the Government of India has failed to give any lead to the country or frame appropriate policy measures in tackling the impending fuel crisis. As a result, the country remains helpless in tackling this grave problem of ever increasing petroleum price scenario.
As a traditional agro based economy, India has to necessarily look inward to work out it’s appropriate development strategy, instead of copying the pattern of growth of developed countries and linking the future of Indian chemical industries to petro based sector.
India has a lot to learn from Brazil, which has been relentlessly exploiting its potential for producing sugar cane for developing ethanol based fuel and ethanol based derivative chemicals. While India need not adopt the exact plans that Brazil has charted for itself, certainly the initiative of Brazil in finding appropriate growth model should be an eye opener and bench mark for India.
There is strong case to shift the priorities and reorient the future growth profile of Indian chemical industries based on agro chemicals rather than petro chemicals. Combination of agro chemical industries with agricultural industry would be the elegant method of combining the twin advantages to meet the larger need of India.
India being a tropical country with different climatic zones, it has been possible to cultivate varieties of agricultural crops in the country . There are possibilities of producing many value added chemical products from the agricultural crops in a viable manner, which can compete with the synthetic chemicals now producied from petroleum based feedstock.
Apart from the increase in the cost of production and price of petro chemical products, environmental issues arising out of synthetic chemicals have also been a matter of grave concern for user sector around the world. Under the circumstances, the agro chemicals produced from natural sources are bound to be viewed as eco friendly, apart from being appropriate to the India’s needs and strength.
Unfortunately, many of the potential valued based agro chemicals are being produced in the country only in small quantity or not at all produced in India at present, which amount to missing investment opportunities in the field.
India still have huge potentials for producing many chemicals based on agro products such as cane molasses, maize /tapiaco / starch , castor etc. In the case to several molasses / starch based chemicals, India entirely imports its requirement of derivative products such as L-lysine, glutamic acid, citric acid etc.
In the case of herbsmedicinal plants, India has huge traditional knowledge and enormous opportunities. Several herbal drugs have been developed for the difficult to treat diseases such as cancer, jaundice etc. based on Indian herbs. Unfortunately, Indian herbal industry is now at the cross roads and is lacking integrated herbal management practices that combine agricultural management, technology practices, application development, product certification and trading. While a lot of discussions have taken place in governmental / non governmental level about the potentials for exploiting the investment opportunities in the herbal sector, they have not been translated into practice adequately.
There are of course, other valuable agricultural products such as jojoba, jatropha, algae etc where India has unique tropical advantages but nothing worthwhile have been achieved so far. Obviously, efforts towards developing and optimizing the technology for the production of agro chemicals appropriate to the Indian conditions, have not been put forth adequately.
Certainly, it is evident that there is lack of focus in requisite measures to boost agro chemicals production in India, which can prove costly in the coming years in view of the uncertainties associated with the petro chemical products.
(The writer is a chemical engineer and Director of Nandini Consultancy Centre,(www.nandinichemical.com) , a renowned firm of Chemical Engineers and Project Consultants, based at Chennai and Singapore)
