What is a People - Centric Energy Transition? For, the last one year, this question intrigued me when I joined the academic administration space for a full-time position in 2019. Even in the academic administration space, the core demand to understand rural energy transition has never gone away since 2003. In 2003, when I started my journey in the Energy Transition space at the Public Policy Research Unit Laboratory of Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi Campus, with the guidance of Late Prof. Sanghamitra Das, transition to me appeared to be just a set of numbers in DOS coded STATA and in MS Access of 2003.
By analyzing the number patterns as a project research intern and by not going for an ICICI/CITI Bank Econometric Modelling Job or Internship, I was trying to understand the probability of chance of switching from firewood to other cooking options in rural households across villages of Uttarakhand (Uttaranchal at that point of time).
Even after twenty years, the basic tenets of the story-plot have not changed. In the course of this journey, my Ph.D in between the journey also tried to prove a hypothesis that rural energy transition in the cooking paradigm of rural households of Bihar in a larger sense was or has the predictable chance of being nonlinear.
By nonlinear, I meant that if income or expenditure rises by a certain amount within a certain rural household in Bihar, it does not necessarily mean that the same household will switch to LPG or clean cookstoves completely and stop using firewood. The thesis dealt with how households behave and how they decide about the switch. It analysed the contexts in which people of rural households in Bihar choose a clean cookstove or LPG and switch from firewood. The contexts proved that the switch to LPG or clean cookstoves from firewood are often spatially chaotic or follows a diffusion pattern of information within a social structure which is chaotic in nature. Here, by chaotic, I also mean that their diffusion patterns are nonlinearly dynamic over time across the different household spaces.
So was my PhD thesis a take on - "People Centric Energy Transition?"
"Did I work on "People Centric Energy Transition" during my research internship? Any work that I have been doing within the domain of rural energy transition or energy transition has been touching upon people, households, and society. Hence, can they be termed as - "People-Centric"? As always, I stay confused within the dialectics of thoughts that at what entry and exit points of research can a work be called -"People Centric"?
Is there any definition for these entry and exit points?
A thorough search of literature and reading shows to me that there are no well-defined entry and exit points. Then the question is and was - "Why in 2003, no one was coining any research project on rural energy transition of people as - People-Centric Energy Transition?"
Questions do not end over here as the next one comes up as - "Why therefore in 2023 People Centric Energy Transition metaphor has come up for similar story plots within the space of rural energy transition?"
To move further, why did IEA at a certain point in time come out with the term - "Just Energy Transition"? What knowledge entry and exit points of research make this terminology - "Just Energy Transition"? I stay only bewildered and perplexed with no definite answers. Hence, my search for a cyclicality in terms of defining entry and exit points and understanding frameworks started to begin sometime in 2019 on the various metaphors of the same content that defines rural energy transition. Are these metaphors of - People, Just coming with a substitutive or complementary effect to the definition or they are mutually exclusive or substitutable?
The journey continued from 2019 till 2023 and then again I decided to do some more exploratory research on - "People Centric Energy Transition" to understand the evolutionary metaphors of rural energy transition more transparently.
Hence, I could see a sense, trend, and pattern of cyclicality in terms of defining certain preexisting core ideas over time and space within the domain of Energy Transition. Thus, is it so, that terms and ideas are finding out the space metaphors of rural energy transition or the space metaphors are defining the terms within the domain of Energy Transition.
Hence to cure all my confusion, I finally came up with the below-mentioned framework of - "People Centric Energy Transition" -
The framework largely arises from Lacanian thinking which has three subdomains - a) The Real or Normative, b) The Symbolic, and c) The Imaginary. Often the Justice domains of Energy Transition are visualized through a Real and Normative lens. Within this domain, the policy perspectives are largely addressing questions of fairness, value systems, capabilities, and the tensions between them. In this framework, the role of individuals, agencies, policy agents, and societal fairness is also talked of through different metaphors of policy languages and paradigms.
The Symbolic subdomain of People-Centric Energy Transition largely takes the narrational lens through the economy, ecology, and societal transitions. Owing to that, this subdomain largely has been following analytical paradigms of logic, order, and linear transition structures in explaining what is people-centric energy transition. While taking this approach, policymakers, agencies, decision-makers, and agents working in this subdomain are often moving towards an ordered energy transition paradigm. Such a paradigm is often a traumatic impossibility leading to the imaginary subdomain which is a world of scenarios and fantasies, fiction which can become real too in the long run.
Finally, therefore, arises the imaginary domain which is the gap between the real and symbolic self within the paradigm of People-Centric Energy Transition. The imaginary segment of People-Centric Energy Transition is therefore also a lot about Energy Culture which often throws out paradoxical outcomes with multiple truths and possibilities. Hence, like a Lacanian frame, the Imaginary Subdomain of People-Centric Energy Transition acts as a bridge between the Real and The Symbolic.
Thus, what emerges finally is that - "People Centric Energy Transition" is like a Parallax and a Split amongst various subdomains. Within such a Parallax, People-Centric Energy Transition domains will continuously evolve with changing politics of space, time, knowledge, and wisdom and the cycle will continue forever in an evolutionary way.
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