India, July 12 -- In a country that imports most of its crude, faces recurring global oil shocks, and is trying to clean up transport emissions without disrupting millions of motorists, ethanol is not a silver bullet. It is a bridge: imperfect, necessary, and increasingly important.

The current debate has become noisy, emotional, and in some cases politically convenient. Motorists are right to complain about mileage, about the lack of choice, and about the feeling that a major fuel transition has been imposed on them faster than the market has adapted. But those valid concerns should not obscure the larger point: ethanol blending helps India reduce its exposure to imported oil, and that matters every time geopolitics sends crude prices u...