Anil Swarup, the man who was entrusted with cleaning up the coal mess, believes that the “coal-gate” would not have happened had there been sufficient supply of coal in the country. In an interview with Subhajit Roy, he also acknowledges that there are serious problems today in the context of energy security in the country. Excerpts:
Being at the helm of coal ministry, you were instrumental in bringing transparency in coal blocks allocation. How do you look at the India’s coal sector turnaround post ‘coal-gate’ saga?
The so called “coal-gate” has precious little to do with the turnaround in the coal sector. In fact, “coal-gate” would not have happened had there been sufficient supply of coal in the country. The mad rush for coal blocks happened because of acute shortage of coal. The real coal story during 2014-15 and 2015-16 was the one relating to the increase in coal production that went up by 34 million tonnes during the first year (more than the cumulative growth during the previous three years) and 44 million tonnes during the following year. Consequent to this increase in production, not a single power plant was critical on account of shortage of coal.
Today, where does India stand in terms of achieving energy security?
There are serious problems today in the context of energy security in the country. And this criticality is not merely on account of shortage of coal which is just one of the factors that constitutes energy component in the country.
Despite several initiatives taken at the policy level, fuel shortage remains the key issue. What it will take to address fuel shortage?
India sits on 300 billion tonnes of coal yet there are shortages. These were overcome during the years 2014-15 and 2015-16 on account of a well-defined strategy that centred around land acquisition, environment and forest clearance and evacuation of coal. Issues relating to these factors were resolved through intensive interaction at the field level and with the stakeholders. Senior officers travelled to the states and sat with the officers of the state government to convey a value proposition and to find solutions to the problems. Strategy of not holding meeting in Delhi to resolve state level issues worked. A web-based monitoring system was put in place to monitor progress on various front and the Coal Project Monitoring was constituted to do so. These steps will need to be revived for increasing coal production.
Has Coal India been succeeded in reducing demand-supply gap?
Coal India has increased its coal production in the recent past. It can do even better if it is not saddled only with “monitoring” by the central government and is provided necessary support in negotiating its problems with the state governments. We all must understand that if strongly worded letters were to solve the problems of the country, they would have been solved long ago. There has to be team spirit and mutual understanding. The gap between supply and demand of coal, however, will depend upon the demand as well.
Coal India has recently revised its 1-billion tonne annual production deadline to 2026 from 2020 earlier. What’s your take on this?
Targets have a limited value. What is important is the process. If the processes can be taken care of (as indicated earlier), the production will improve. Just targets without a deliverable action plan has no meaning.
UDAY was launched to rescue the country’s ailing state power discoms. Has it been really successful?
In my view, UDAY hasn’t travelled the distance it should have travelled in the states. The financial restructuring in terms of transfer of debt to the states happened but the more critical parts of UDAY, like feeder separation, reduction of AT&C losses, price rationalisation etc. have not happened in most of the states. DISCOMS are still in a bad shape.
Finally, how do you see the future of Indian coal sector beyond 2019?
Coal will continue to be major source of energy in the country. If necessary steps, as outlined earlier, are taken, coal production will see a jump. Efforts will also have to made to get auctioned/allocated coal mines going. These can impact coal production. If commercial mining finally happens, as it should, it would improve the supply of coal.
