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India has done little to bridge energy supply-demand gap Vikram Singh

"We have done very little over the last few decades to make the policy linkages between energy-environment and climate change. We did not pay enough attention on energy infrastructure, conservation, subsidisation of LPG and petrol. These are all policy inadequacies that contributed to the increase in demand of energy," said Brookings India Chairman Vikram Singh Mehta, who previously served with Shell India as its CEO.

Mehta was speaking at a roundtable, 'India's Energy Security and Climate Change Commitments: Policy Challenges', organized by Delhi-based think tank Society for Policy Studies (SPS) in association with the India International Centre (IIC) on Friday evening. He said government policies had failed to balance the pace between surging demand and supply constraints that caused the current energy crisis in India, the fifth largest energy consumer in the world. India is home to nearly 18 per cent of the global population but uses only six per cent of the world's primary energy resources and the country is set for a sustained growth in energy demand with its growing economy, according to the Energy Outlook 2015.

"The energy crisis facing India is because the demand is surging and the supply is failing to keep pace with demand," Mehta said, pointing out that the demand was due to the rising population and growing prosperity in the country.