Energy Security vs. Food Inflation: An Empirical Analysis of Crop-Substitution and Price Spillover Effects in India's E20 Ethanol Expansion

India's Ethanol Blended Petrol (EBP) Programme has advanced from a marginal 1.14–1.53 per cent blending rate in 2013–14 to the statutory 20 per cent (E20) target by Ethanol Supply Year (ESY) 2025–26, five years ahead of the original 2030 deadline set under the National Policy on Biofuels, 2018. This rapid scale-up has been accompanied by an equally rapid structural shift in feedstock composition: official data show the share of grain-based ethanol (maize, rice, and damaged food grain) rising from roughly 9 per cent of total procurement in ESY 2020–21 to nearly 60 per cent by early ESY 2024–25, with industry-association estimates placing maize's individual share alone at approximately 50 per cent by ESY 2024–25, up from 6.2 per cent two years earlier. This paper examines the resulting energy-security-versus-food-inflation trade-off using officially reported and peer-reviewed data. It synthesises the National Policy on Biofuels (2018, amended 2022), the NITI Aayog Roadmap for Ethanol Blending in India 2020–25, Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) blending statistics, USDA Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) maize market data, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Ministry of Finance inflation reporting, and a 2026 peer-reviewed partial-equilibrium modelling study (published in PLOS One by researchers at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and the FABLE Consortium). The analysis finds credible evidence of crop-substitution pressure — a 14.7 per cent year-on-year decline in maize production coinciding with record consumption, an 84 per cent collapse in maize exports, and open-market maize prices exceeding the government's minimum support price by approximately 11 per cent in April 2024 — alongside documented cumulative energy-security gains of over ₹1.36–1.59 lakh crore in foreign exchange savings. However, the paper finds that a direct, India-specific econometric (VAR/Granger) estimate of ethanol-to-food-price transmission does not yet exist in the peer-reviewed literature; this study is accordingly framed as a literature- and data-grounded empirical synthesis rather than primary econometric estimation, and it explicitly flags this gap as a priority for future research. Policy recommendations centre on feedstock diversification toward 2G/cellulosic ethanol, protection of grain buffer stocks, and integration of food-price monitoring into the biofuel roadmap.