Fractured/Earth

yesterday, the SC ruled that all coal block allocations, from 1993 onwards, were illegal. and i, little rajshekhar, wrote this edit.

The Supreme Court’s ‘Coalgate’ verdict needs to be welcomed. It gives India a rare second chance to fix terrible decisions made by our politicians.

The coal allocations scandal is not an outrage merely because undeserving companies got coal blocks. It is an outrage because it concentrated the ownership of India’s coal reserves among a handful of businesses. In the process, it warped competitive advantage in the power-generation market where thermal projects relying on coal linkages and imported coal found themselves unable to compete with companies with captive blocks.

It also accelerated the country’s dependence on imported coal. Which, in turn, created fresh scams around coal imports. Coalgate also accelerated the loss of India’s already battered central forests and imperilled the rivers that originate from there. We now have a chance to set some of these things right.

But, for that, two things need to happen...