The principal goal of the biofuel programme in India must be fossil fuel substitution, while catalysing rural development through this route, as envisaged in a Planning Commission report, should be secondary. Concern for energy security should promote maximisation of production, consequently large-scale plantations might well emerge. In another approach, community and small farmers could be promoted through cooperatives, panchayati raj institutions and the like. The proposal to take up a biodiesel production programme based on cultivation of Jatropha on the wastelands of 26 states might also be stretching the argument that such land is available.
