Collective institutional entrepreneurship and contestations in wind energy in India

With 19550 MW installed in 2013, India is considered a success story in terms of net installed capacity of wind power. Few existing studies on wind energy in India have highlighted the important role of institutions, and most lack a detailed account of how influential institutions came about through the work of advocacy groups, or tend to focus on short time periods. This paper uses the notion of collective institutional entrepreneurship to analyse institutionalisation of wind energy in India across three time periods (1985–1995, 1995-2003, and 2003-2013). The analysis shows that wind power development in India was driven by efforts of collective institutional entrepreneurs using two aggregated strategies, i.e. (1) creation of supportive techno-economic and socio-political networks; (2) creation of an indigenous innovation infrastructure. The paper highlights setbacks, controversies, contestations and tensions between various actor groups in collective institutional entrepreneurship and argues that actions must be taken for inclusion of actors who have been marginalized in the process.