On: The Guardian view on India’s green growth gamble: it will need more than...

The talk of India’s green growth, and the insistence that private finance alone will not suffice, is a familiar refrain. It is presented as a novel challenge, this balancing of industrialisation with decarbonisation, as if the laws of economics bend for every new nation that rises. But the underlying truth is far older than any modern climate concern.

The notion that a nation can industrialise purely on the whims of private capital is a fantasy peddled by those who benefit from a constrained public purse. Private finance, by its very nature, seeks immediate returns and shies from the grand, long-term investments that truly transform an economy. Infrastructure, foundational industries, and indeed, the wholesale re-engineering required for a green transition - these are undertakings that demand a patient, powerful hand. That hand is, and always has been, the state’s.

To suggest that India must avoid China’s “overcapacity trap” by relying solely on private initiative is to misunderstand the very engine of growth. Overcapacity is often the necessary, if sometimes untidy, consequence of ambition. It is a sign of investment, of a belief in future demand. The real trap is underinvestment, the paralysis that comes from waiting for private hands to build what only public will can initiate. The argument for private finance as the sole driver is not an economic necessity; it is a political preference, dressed in the garb of fiscal prudence. It is a choice to limit the possible, rather than to expand it. And it is a choice that will leave millions waiting for a prosperity that never quite arrives.