Then D1 got into financial trouble attempting to compete with bargain basement soy biodiesel from the US and sought a stake from BP. BP is one of the oil majors that Indira Gandhi kicked out of India in the 1970s for amassing huge land holdings and deriving much of their income from land rents that effectively reduced the local farmers to serfs.

Today foreign companies can no longer own land in India, but the government, which is still strongly influenced by the Gandhi family, was not pleased to see D1-BP leasing huge tea estates and brewery farms. According to some government insiders, this was one of the reasons for declaring the present moratorium on Jatropha plantation.

D1 has apparently also had difficulty educating BP about fuel farming and reasonable timelines for success. In the meantime, they want to bring to market Jatropha byproducts such as animal feeds and fertilizers that can keep the company profitable until the plants reach full productivity.

If D1 can shift BP’s stake from fuel farming to oil marketing, which it understands, everyone is likely to be happier, and India’s Jatropha plantation moratorium is likely to be shorter.