Black clouds over coal

AK Ramdas 03 September 2012

Coal India as a monopoly, has grown far too big to handle its operations. Perhaps, the time has come for Coal India to be split

Black clouds are gathering over the anticipated heavy storm conditions in the capital this week, as opposition parties, spearheaded by the BJP, chant the ouster mantra for prime minister Dr Manmohan Singh to take the rap and resign on the coal block allocation issue. They demand that he takes the moral responsibility for this great lapse.

The only peace pipe offering seems to be the urgent and immediate need to cancel all the coal licenses issued, some 142 of them, and then arrange for a thorough investigation; only then, they will let the Parliament function and that too after ensuring a detailed and perhaps a volatile debate on the issue.

Unfortunately for the government, as details surface, there are lapses and errors of judgement. The most prominent case, unearthed by Times of India (Times Now?) refers to tourism minister Subodh Kant Sahay’s admission that the allocation sought for his brother of two coal blocks, where he is an ‘honourable’ executive director does hold any water.

It is presumed that assistance sought from the Prime Minister's Office (PMO), would in all probability get a stereotyped letter, recommending to the concerned department/ministry to take ‘appropriate’ action. No more, no less. The PMO probably releases several such letters in a day!

Though coal minister Sriprakash Jaiswal has initially stated that no licenses will be cancelled; later, he stated that the allottees have been asked to explain why they have not made any progress in the blocks allocated to them. Chances are, at least some of them will come up with lame but plausible excuses of being unable to make any progress due to their inability to get the required clearances. Eventually, some licenses will have to be cancelled, without question.

However, if the licensees had any sense of responsibility and seriousness to work on the blocks, why did they not raise the issues in public? Why were they squatting on the allotted work without practically doing even the basic spade work?

Let those allottees of these blocks who have made some progress come out to the media and detail the areas where they are stuck and also say whether the work is held up at the state or MOEF (ministry of environment and forests) level. Simply passing the buck to lack of clearances will no longer be palatable.

Coal India (CIL) itself is in a mess with so many pending applications and the fact remains that as a monopoly, it has grown far too big to handle its operations in India itself, forgetting, for the time being, its keen interest to branch into foreign territory.

There have been reports in the media that perhaps, the time has come for Coal India itself to be split into various units covering different aspects of its operations of its business, so that this sort of balkanization help to improve the overall performance of the coal industry. We must remember that CIL has a vital role to play in ensuring fuel supply to meet the growing demand of the power industry.

In fact, the UPA government must now set a time-frame of say three months to complete its investigations and new system to be in place latest by the 1 January 2013 for effective functioning.

No more excuses; no more marathon meetings on FSAs and the government must direct the state, MOEF and Coal India to sit across the table and sort out their problems in a marathon session. It should not even leave the meetings until the agreement is reached and time frame set for execution.

(AK Ramdas has worked with the Engineering Export Promotion Council of the ministry of commerce and was associated with various committees of the Council. His international career took him to places like Beirut, Kuwait and Dubai at a time when these were small trading outposts; and later to the US. He can be contacted at [email protected].)

Comments