India now draws close to a third of its electricity from renewable sources. We reached our non-fossil energy target five years ahead of schedule. That is a result worth being proud of, but ask who will build the next stage, and the answer gets less certain.
I heard that uncertainty at the 6th Yuva Sustainability Conference, organised by Voices of Bharat: Yuva for Sustainability. The speakers came from a solar manufacturer, a defence cantonment, an industry chamber, a corporate foundation and business journalism. Each talked about a different thing, yet they were all describing the same problem from different sides.
What we still depend on others for
Vijay Menon, Chief Operating Officer at Navitas Solar, gave the clearest picture. India has 200 gigawatts of capacity to make solar modules. One step earlier in the chain, cell capacity is around 110 gigawatts or less. At the stage of wafers and refined silicon, it is almost nothing. China controls about 95 per cent of that upstream work, and much of the technology Indian firms use there is bought, not built.
For a student looking for a research topic, this is a good place to start. Menon pointed to chemical and electrical engineering problems in purifying silicon and making wafers, the kind of work that university groups in Australia, the UK and Germany have done for decades. He also named areas that get less attention. Foreign funds want to invest in Indian projects, and someone has to work out the finance and tax structures that let them hold an asset or sell it later. India also still lags behind China and Southeast Asia on ease of doing business, where approvals come from one window.
Two more gaps came up. Solar stops at night, so developers now build round-the-clock power by combining solar, wind and batteries, and some utilities want electricity delivered at fixed times for 25 years. Menon said solar with storage is already cheaper than thermal power, so the work now is to bring the cost down further. Then there is waste. His company works with a technology partner that recovers 95 per cent of solar module waste, ahead of the 85 to 90 per cent seen in Europe. Recycling, he said, may be one of humanity’s biggest unsolved problems.
Skills that do not fit in one box
Shalini S Sharma of the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry said companies are not hunting for one special skill. They want people who can read data, since ESG reporting is getting stricter. They want people who look at a problem from start to end. A chemicals graduate has to understand design, law, finance, logistics and waste too. And they want a plain willingness to say, “I don’t know this yet, but I will learn it.”
She did name one skill that pays off now: carbon accounting. The European Union’s carbon border tax is already hurting Indian steel makers and other exporters, and anyone who understands carbon footprints and credits can help them. She also raised something that rarely makes the headlines. Many engineers study in their mother tongue until Class 12 and then face English-only classrooms. Years later, that shows up in the interview room.
What AI changes, and what it does not
Menon said machines can take over spreadsheets and routine reports, but not logical reasoning and problem solving. George Skaria, former editor of Indian Management and Asian Management Review, added a point from the World Economic Forum’s jobs report. AI specialists and data scientists will be in demand, but so will farm workers, delivery staff, barbers and nurses. The future of work is not only about screens. One of the youth storytellers asked whether green skilling will reach everyone or open a new gap between the connected and the
left behind. Aman Pannu, President of DCM Shriram Foundation, said training has to travel to the learner. Videos alone do not work, and skill centres need hands-on practice. In Hardoi, a rural district in Uttar Pradesh, half the students in the foundation’s electrical and solar course were girls, which the team had not expected. She also said an idea that works in one place can fail in another. Drones did well in Maharashtra’s sugarcane fields and did not in Uttar Pradesh.
Problems that need patient work on the ground
Dr Tanu Jain, CEO of Bareilly Cantonment Board, described how Bareilly became India’s first carbon-negative cantonment. The team did not start with a big project. They measured their own energy use and emissions, spent months explaining things to residents, and then tracked their progress. On the Nakatiya river, a 52-kilometre stream that had turned into a drain, they planted about ten lakh vetiver slips and 50,000 trees with help from many departments. Her point was simple: you cannot fix what you have not measured.
Asked about using empty defence land for solar, she was just as direct. The land exists, but grid connections, long-term military plans and security needs make every plot a separate decision. Research that maps usable land against grid access would be useful.
Pannu raised another gap. About 90 per cent of India’s water goes to agriculture, and 40 per cent of that is wasted, so farm water efficiency is a far bigger problem than the taps in our homes. She also said CSR must go past annual reports. Her foundation returned to a school toilet project three years after leaving and found that about 70 per cent of the blocks were still in use. Skaria added that most CSR money goes to health and education, very little to the environment, and that MSMEs, which produce about 30 per cent of GDP and employ some 120
million people, rarely feature in sustainability awards. Finding ways to measure long-term impact and to help small businesses go green remain open questions.
So, who builds a sustainable Bharat?
No single group does. Industry has the jobs but cannot train everyone. Colleges have the students but lack practice grounds. Government holds the land and writes the rules. Communities know what works in their own villages. Young people bring energy, and with a median age of twenty-eight, they bring numbers.
Sharma suggested one workable bridge. Industry bodies can arrange virtual factory tours and short practical courses, so students see real work without entering a plant. Menon described his company’s work with nearby ITIs to shape what they teach. These are small steps, but they are the kind that scale.
What you can do next
If you are a student, pick one hard problem and stay with it. It could be silicon refining, battery cost, solar recycling, carbon accounting, farm water or defence land. If you teach, let industry into your classroom. If you run a company, share what you know and hire people who are eager to learn. If you work in CSR or government, count what changed in people’s lives, not only how many you reached. These are not just challenges. They are careers waiting for someone to begin.
The question is who will build a sustainable Bharat, and the answer is simple. We will build a sustainable Bharat when we stop waiting for someone else to do it.
