India, Sept. 20 -- Most evenings in summer, the grid groans. Fans run harder, water pumps work longer, and the furnaces that smelt our steel never stop. Much as we would like to believe this is a story increasingly powered by solar parks in Rajasthan and wind farms in Gujarat because India has built significant capacities, the truth is less flattering. When demand peaks, it is coal that saves us. Last week, the mandarins in Delhi offered a fix. Huge subsidies to trap the smoke from coal before it hits the air. A promise that we can keep burning the black rock and still call it clean. This sounds clever. But here's the problem. It isn't new. Norway tried. America spent billions. China is still at it. None have cracked the code so far. The representative, who did not want to be named, of a coalition of Indian philanthropists invested in the climate change debate puts it well: "The decarbonisation debate is such a layered one, especially in India. Coal still underpins our energy security and livelihoods, so any shift away from it has to balance jobs, affordability, and reliability alongside climate ambition." That balance she talks about explains why coal remains untouchable. Not because it is cheap, but because it is political. Mines mean jobs. Railways depend on coal freight. State treasuries draw fat royalties from it. So, carbon capture emerges as a compromise. It reassures investors that India hasn't walked away from climate commitments. It gives companies like NTPC and Coal India a line to tell the world: 'we're part of the solution, not the problem'. It buys policymakers time. But strip away the optics and the picture is murkier. Capturing smoke doesn't make coal clean. At best, it makes it slightly less filthy. And it diverts scarce money into a technology that has yet to prove itself, while starving alternatives that already work. Consider this: India is one of the largest low-cost producers of solar energy, battery costs are falling, the grid, though creaky, is getting smarter. A rupee spent on trapping emissions from coal could just as easily fund storage, transmission of decentralised solar. That would cut pollution and create new jobs without prolonging an old addiction. There are sectors where carbon capture may have merit. Steel and cement have no easy substitutes. Here, trapping emissions could help. But power? That's different. Every incentive we pour into coal risks becoming an alibi for delay. The unnamed representative quoted above says bluntly: "Politically, it's framed as a sovereignty issue, India doesn't want to be boxed in by Western pressure. Optically, though, there's growing recognition that India also has an opportunity to lead, through renewables, green hydrogen, efficiency, and by shaping the global South narrative." That's the paradox. We don't want to be told what to do by the West. Yet we crave recognition as a leader for the South. One impulse drags us back, the other pushes us forward. Meanwhile, the ground reality hasn't changed. This August, India's power demand hit record highs. Perhaps, cooling devices were on through the night. Offices couldn't afford outages. The thought of telling voters there isn't enough electricity is political suicide. So coal stays. Dressed in new clothes, but still coal. What this framing leaves out are the people bound to it. Families in mining towns. States hooked to coal royalties. Workers who cannot retrain overnight. When the narrative is about megawatts and targets, they vanish. Which is why the aforementioned representative's caution matters: "To me the real issue is how we create a 'just transition': one that doesn't leave coal-dependent communities behind, while still accelerating the clean energy push." We imagine technology will fix everything, but the real knot is social. How do you move a community off the only livelihood it knows? How do you replace not just the income but the dignity of work? The bigger tragedy is imagination. We could use the same subsidies now promised to coal for other things: microgrids in villages, storage built in Indian labs, transmission lines that can carry renewable power without collapsing. We could price coal's pollution honestly instead of inventing ways to excuse it. That would be a real transition. The future of India's energy won't be decided in lab tests of smokestack filters. It will be decided on whether we have the conviction to back what works, and the compassion to carry everyone along. That's the discipline this moment demands, not a subsidy to extend yesterday's fuel....