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Since 2025, E20 fuel, that's 80% petrol and 20% ethanol, has become the default fuel at nearly all petrol stations across the nation. On June 5th, the Petroleum Minister switched on E85 fuel at an Indian Oil pump in Delhi. There are 48 outlets serving it today, and the plan is to get to 5,000 by the end of 2027. Evidently, the ethanol revolution is upon us, and we do not get to have a say.
My bikes have been running rougher since. Brothers, because of ethanol, look at the problems vehicles are facing. Look at how much dirt has accumulated inside. A motorcycle refusing to start. Even your car's mileage is dropping. The average is decreasing, and along with that, the tank has become choked. It broke down midway earlier, and suddenly the engine light came on. The vibrations in the car have increased. And maybe off-heard reports, as a reason for this damage, is a corporate scandal led by Nitin Gadkari and his family. But all of this is just a small part of a much larger story.
Well, it's true that this ethanol push is a genuinely impressive and ambitious project for a developing nation like ours. But agricultural inefficiency and corporate greed are charging this movement a very hefty bill, and it's the working class's pockets that end up paying the debt. And believe it or not, this is a movement increasing the number of water wives in India. And yes, that's a real thing. But we will get to that later. So, in the next 20 minutes, I am going to share everything we have researched and found: what India got right, what we got dangerously wrong, what is costing you in rupees, and most importantly, what you can do to protect yourself during this transition.
Okay, a quick recap of the story until now. Now, some of you might already know some of this; some of you may not. But let's get you all on the same page. This bit is important. So, stay with me, okay? Now, this problem India is trying to solve is old and brutal. India imports about 85% of its crude oil. In the 2024-2025 financial year, the import bill was roughly $137 billion dollars. Now, every time there is a war in West Asia, every time a tanker can't cross the Strait of Hormuz, India's economy feels it at every level. Not to mention that fossil fuels are not a sustainable practice. So, the goal is energy independence, self-reliance, make your own fuel. And the world already knows the real long-term answer to this: it's electric EVs. The cost curve on batteries is collapsing. Global battery pack prices just hit a record low of around $18 per kilowatt-hour in 2025. Running an EV in India costs roughly $1 to $1.5 per kilometer versus $6+ for a petrol car. But unfortunately, you cannot electrify 260 million two-wheelers overnight. You cannot rebuild a country's entire fuel infrastructure in five years. That transition takes decades, and it is to bridge that transition that the ethanol revolution started to take shape in India since the early 2000s. That's when our ethanol blending program began. But for 20 years, it barely moved. Then in 2021, "Today, we have resolved to achieve the target of 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2025." It suddenly became the most rapidly fast-tracked project held by the government ever. Why that is, I will answer that in Chapter Two.
Now, the government's pitch to us is that ethanol fuel is cheaper than crude oil, which will make our import bills go down. Even emissions would reduce because ethanol is a cleaner energy source than petrol. And, we get to pay our own farmers for the raw materials instead of crude exporters in Saudi. But most importantly, we get cheaper fuel. Such for the promise made by the government. "Now all vehicles will run on ethanol prepared by farmers. 60% ethanol, 40% electricity. If the average is calculated, it will be ₹15 per liter for petrol. The public will benefit." So, how many of those actually came true? And what did it secretly cost us? Let me show you. By June 2026, our Petroleum Minister laid out the official scorecard: ethanol blending over the years had cut India's oil import bill and saved over ₹1.84 lakh crore in foreign exchange. It avoided nearly 99 lakh tons of carbon emissions, and it put well over ₹1.18 lakh crore directly into our farmers' hands. Which, by the way, is great news. Credit? But it's you. And we also got there fast. The target was 20% ethanol in petrol (E20) by 2030. India hit it in 2025, five years early. But that's exactly what brought on the green lash.
See, this wasn't an unforeseen circumstance either. Look at NITI Aayog's own roadmap. They predicted this would happen. They recommended pricing the fuel cheaper. But no, the government just ignored that. If its non-production cost, the government's lesser than petrol, and they are saving so much money on foreign exchange, then why has its fuel gotten cheaper for the common folk? Well, as it stands, E20 petrol in Delhi costs about ₹13 a liter, same as regular petrol. The exact same price for lesser mileage than petrol. That's literally straight-up looting. And then came the second wave of the green lash. See, ethanol is hygroscopic. It pulls moisture from the air. So, over time, that moisture corrodes metal fuel lines and eats away at the rubber and plastic parts of your engine. And yes, this too was flagged in the NITI Aayog roadmap. Finally, the third wave: the insurance trap. ICICI Lombard published a note warning that ethanol-related damage in older, non-compatible cars could be treated as negligence, and claims could be disputed. Which could have made sense had we been given a chance. But since April 1st, 2026, E20 fuel is the only fuel available. There is no choice anymore. Owners are literally being hung out to dry, blatantly.
So now you know the cost individuals paid for a relief in foreign exchange that the government wanted. But what about relief for us? Well, that came too, in the form of a cut in excise duty. The government called it a revenue sacrifice of nearly ₹1 lakh crore. Noble, until you learn the context. Look at this chart. Okay, in 2013, crude oil was about $105 a barrel. Petrol in India was around ₹70. Excise duty was roughly ₹10. In 2014, crude crashed. Petrol prices in India stayed the same. In 2015, crude was half the price. We barely felt the discount. In 2020, the same story. And right now, crude is over $80, but fuel prices are at an all-time high. Maybe the hikes are bad due to import difficulties and welfare needs. But one of those major needs is cheaper fuel, and that has been completely ignored.
Now, to make it worse, the government calls the excise duty cuts a "revenue sacrifice" on their part. When all they did was return our money to us. We paid those taxes, and we still don't know where exactly that money went. No real transparency, no accounting. That's precisely what erodes public trust. And to completely destroy whatever trust that did remain came the next big controversy. Now, reportedly, the Petroleum Ministry didn't architect this ethanol push by themselves. The person who actually spearheaded it, who fast-tracked the target from 2030 to 2025, is somebody else entirely. It's Nitin Gadkari, our Road and Transport Minister. The acceleration of E85 and E100 plans, this entire revolution, can be credited, or I guess blamed, on him, depending on which side of the story you are on.
Now, a lot of critics argue whether the ethanol push is a story of public interest or a story of the private interest of Nitin Gadkari. Because allegations surfaced that his family business is deeply tied to the ethanol push. His son, apparently, is linked to a company called Siyaram Agro, an ethanol supplier. And in June 2024, Siyaram Agro reported revenue of around ₹18 crore. Normal, reasonable. But one year later, ₹523 crore. The stock climbed over 2,000%, which is not a normal rise. That's like, I don't know, the Larry Silverstein level of lucky. But Gadkari denies the allegations, saying his son's company makes up less than half a percent of India's ethanol supply. That he does not award the tenders; the Petroleum Ministry does. That he does not set prices; the cabinet does. Since there's no actual evidence of any wrongdoing, this could be pure coincidence as well. We cannot know because there has been no investigation. The Prevention of Corruption Act was designed to prevent such a conflict of interest, and yet here we are.
Now, even a citizen tied to RTI asked the government to disclose the ARAI safety studies it cited to justify E20. ARAI simply refused, calling them confidential trade secrets. Now, the lack of this transparency and the dangerous loopholes utilized are what makes people lose their trust bit by bit. "These people who argue are the most anti-national in the country." I want to be clear: these questions are not anti-national or anti-government. I am just covering everything that happened. Like, for example, this sentiment from Nitin Gadkari himself: "I will not allow driverless cars to come to India. The reason is that a large employment is generated in our country in the form of drivers, and if you bring driverless cars, these people will lose their jobs." That very sentiment is what I hope he continues to adhere to as he continues on the most extensive marketing campaign ever done for sugarcane juice as fuel. So, you have eroding public trust, and instead of halting the momentum of the ethanol push, they are accelerating it. Within months of hitting E20, India notified standards for E22, E27, even E30. It waived excise on the higher blends. E85 is already rolling out. Plans for E100 are on the table. Even isobutanol, in fact, is being tested as a stand-in for diesel. India is now the third-largest ethanol producer on planet Earth. Brazil took decades to reach a 25% blend. The United States has been stuck at a 10% blend wall for literally 15 years, and we have just sprinted past milestones. But it's this very sprint that is about to turn into an unpredictable downfall. And almost nobody is talking about it.
So, okay. I think all of this does not just come from thin air. It's made from crops, which means it's made from land and water. And the way India is using to grow it is setting up a new crisis. But before I share that with you, let's pause for a moment to talk about something else. See, we will be talking this whole time about the mismanagement of money, and it's the kind of thing that creeps into all our businesses and lives. So, I want to show you that there is actually a way to know where every single rupee goes in real-time through our partner for today's video, Odoo. Odoo is an all-in-one enterprise management app, and its AI-native accounting tool is built so that a business never ends up in the dark. You send and receive unlimited invoices and bills, and it's fully GST compliant out of the box. There is basically no data entry either. Odoo's AI scans your bills at a 98% recognition rate. So, all you do is hit "Validate." Snap a photo for a receipt on your phone, and it handles the rest. And reconciliation, the path that usually takes up days, Odoo syncs with 28,000 banks and matches 95% of your transactions automatically. You know, KPMG's own tax head said a year-end closing that usually used to take them four days now takes three hours with it. Every report updates live, so you always know exactly where your money is. And the best part, Odoo is more than just an accounting tool. It's an all-in-one business management software with 45+ applications that scale as your business grows. And you can get the whole suite for ₹580 per month per user. So, check out Odoo from the link in the description.
Now, back to our video. You know, the original promise from our government was brilliant. We were going to brew this fuel from waste like crops, red dough, or the paddy straw that farmers set on fire every winter. It used to produce what's called second-generation ethanol. Now, that way, ethanol wouldn't compete with other food crops for land use, and no extra water would have been wasted either for it. But that promise has almost entirely failed to materialize. India's flagship 2G plant in Panipat has limped along below capacity for years. We hit a 20% target with essentially zero contribution from the clean version. So, let me show you where our ethanol is actually coming from, because there lie many, many issues. Roughly 70% of our ethanol comes from grains like rice and maize, and about 30% comes from sugarcane. For sugarcane is what we started the ethanol production program with. But, unfortunately, it's a water-guzzling crop. You know, making a single liter of ethanol from cane takes over 3,500 liters of water. And most of our sugarcane grows in Maharashtra and UP, which are infamously some of the most water-stressed lands in the country. Now, you look at Brazil; they use corn as well, but there it's mostly rain-fed. Our canes drink up the groundwater of an area where there's barely any left. That's definitely not good management.
Then what the government did was, they pivoted to maize, which now makes up about half our ethanol stores. But take a wild guess how much water it takes to produce 1 liter of ethanol from maize. It's 4500 liters. But as the demand for maize increased, its price also jumped from ₹15,000 to ₹25,000 per ton. Now, we need to be a maize exporter, but now we are tipping into being net importers. About 60% of the maize we did produce used to go to poultry and cattle feed. So, the cost for those farmers increases, and subsequently, the price of chicken and eggs are increasing as well. Now, add to that the surge in demand is causing farmers to switch to it instead of pulses and oilseeds, the crops at the center of the Indian platter. In other words, food prices will hike up, and the edible oil import bills will rise as well. The lack of proper management is causing our increase in self-reliance in energy to decrease our self-reliance in food. And finally, we have rice. The worst managed of the lot. So, the FCI has its own food stockpile, which it buys in order to feed the poor people of the country. But it's that very rice that they are selling to ethanol distilleries. Now, you have to realize here, okay, those grains were bought using our tax money and were meant for the less privileged people of this country. Right now, broken rice makes up 25% of the free rations handed to nearly 80 crore people. The government's new plan is to cut that share to 10% and send more to distilleries instead. Oh, and rice is also the biggest consumer of water. It drinks over 10,000 liters of water to produce a single liter of ethanol. This water crisis is the deepest impact of the ethanol push. We recently made a video on the El Niño heatwaves. Even there, water scarcity is the main issue that the story led to. And we are also currently researching AI data centers and their water consumption. Everything is kind of starting to point in the same direction: a huge water crisis. So, mismanagement can prove extremely deadly. You know, NITI Aayog has warned that 21 major cities, including Delhi, Bangalore, and Chennai, face critical groundwater depletion. Many of these cities are expected to run out of water by 2030. This water crisis is so bad that in parts of rural Maharashtra, most notably in a village called Dengamal, the concept of a "water wife" has taken shape. You know, many in these villages marry a second or third wife, often a widow or someone who can't afford dowry. And their purpose is to simply fetch water from far away. We are not helping these women. We are enabling a scenario that produces more of them. You know, the bridge that was supposed to carry us from petrol to electric is mutating into its own new crisis. That is not what any of us signed up for.
But there is some good news. Some of this can still be solved. Vehicles made for 2023 are not E20 compliant, which means you need to replace parts of it or, worst case, get rid of the rapidly depreciating asset that no one wants to buy. The least the government can do is channel some of that windfall into a real transition relief program. One where they compensate you for your outdated vehicle to some extent or subsidize replacement costs. Next up, the government needs to remember that the goal was ethanol. It was second-generation ethanol, where land use and water crises don't show up. And another reminder: they need to cap the food and feed crops that we use to produce ethanol. If it's not coming from cleaner sources, it's not worth it. Now, that's up to the authorities. We may or may not get this. Regardless, you must act now to protect yourself from the potential ethanol mismanagement. Remember ICICI Lombard? The green lash caught their cloud, and they heard it. The very next week, they reversed course and confirmed that policies stay fully valid with E20 fuel as well. So, you need to call your own insurer, ask in writing whether E20-related damage is covered or not. Get it on record. You are not a helpless consumer. You are part of a pool of millions. That's leverage. Use it. And most importantly, whatever cost you bear to deal with this ethanol crisis, keep the damn receipts. If the government listens to us and puts a relief program in place, at least you are prepared for it. Oh, and if you are about to buy a new car, please make sure it's compatible. And that's it. That's how we can navigate this ethanol revolution better.
You know, when Brazil's fuel program nearly collapsed in the 1990s, they didn't force a broken system onto their people. They rebuilt it slowly. First, they gave people flex-fuel cars, then the choice to switch to ethanol blends, and then they reduced ethanol prices to naturally gravitate people towards the change. They were guided slowly, not forced. We have inverted it. We built the fuel before giving an infrastructure for it. It just doesn't make sense. But, well, we have to bear those costs. This is not a story of collapse, or at least it doesn't have to be. While the government fast-tracks this ethanol push, people all over the streets and all over social media are pushing back and making their voices heard. If the flex-fuel future is anyway going to arrive in the name of self-reliance, then it has to arrive alongside trust, transparency, choice, and the guarantee that this does not mutate into a water crisis or an agricultural crisis. These are the progressive emissions of our country. But they should not happen to you while you stand in the dark, unaware of the cost or how to navigate it. They should happen for you. So, share this with somebody who wants a car or a two-wheeler, anybody filling up without knowing the trade-off. So that they, like you, like me, like everybody who refused to be quietly stripped of their choice, can step out of the dark and make a decision as they actually desire. And before you go away, subscribe to our channel so we can keep bringing these stories to all of you. If you want to learn how to make videos like the one you are watching right now, let me give you a glimpse of what it takes. Have you good to go? Yeah? Okay. Okay. Have you good to go? As you saw, it takes an army of people to create and deliver a well-produced video to you guys. And people who can do this are in high demand. With the right training, you can turn video making, that's from the concept to the final cut, into a high-income skill with the Video Mastery Program in less than three months. Most of the folks you see here are from a video editing school. So, if you are a student, a job seeker, a content creator, or just somebody who wants to get into the field of video making and video editing, our program is the right place for you to start. It will take you from absolute basics and core video editing skills, storytelling, production, motion design, and Gen AI to a hireable editor or video producer. You know, we have trained over 3,000 editors, many of whom are working with some of the top creators and companies. So, if you are somebody who wants to learn the skill of video editing, producing videos, or are just curious about our program, sign up for the free masterclass that we are hosting. Link is in the description below.