Barack Obama, the President of United States once
quoted, “A nation that can’t control its energy sources can’t control its
future” and today the same things applies in a much larger context to our own
nation.
Our ancient history is in itself a proof of our great
heritage of energy resources. India is indeed a mine of natural resources.
Talking about coal, India is having one of the largest coal reserves around the
world. With numerous coal mines in states of Jharkhand, Orrisa and Chattisgarh,
India was slated to become the leader of the world in terms of coal exports but
unfortunately today we are shrouded by an embarrassing crisis in which
notwithstanding having world’s largest coal reserves, we face an alarming need
to import coal from nations around the world. India is even poised to outshine
China in terms of coal imports. Owning to all these fact, today there is a huge
question mark on the efficaciousness of our efforts and schemes in dealing with
extraction of coal and its allocation throughout the nation and today the time
has come when we emend our redundant and futile policies in order to help India
rise up as a significant coal exporters rather than being a huge coal importer.
The main problem that today we are facing is of the denationalization
of coal. Previously the authorities as well as the governments were reluctant
to carry out this procedure which ultimately led to a huge wastage of India’s
money reserves and also led to huge degradation of our coal reserves.
The problem that today the whole nation faces is of management
of our natural resources. India, despite of having such humongous natural resources
reserve continues to be a laggard in terms of management of our resources. The
concurrent policy is that Indian government continues to look for resources for
decades. It spends million in the exploration of resources around the nation,
in various states, spending money, using huge manpower and when finally the government
comes to know about the resources, it allocates them to inefficient companies
which leads to a significant loss of the national government as well as the national
treasure and the allocation process too leads to various hindrances adding to
the previously exacerbated situation and this is evident from the recent Coal
block allocation scam unearthed during the last times of UPA regime. Such
things eventually lead to huge loss of the government because of the inability
of the companies to extract the resource to the correct amount needed without
much damage to the site hence at last forcing the government to import coal
from other nations.
Hence a major step towards the enhancement of the
whole process and destruction of impediments could be denationalization of
coal. If India is to exploit its coal reserves fully without sustaining any
unwanted problems and if its wants to light up every home and every factory
then the government must denationalize this important resource. The first and
the foremost step would to open this important industry for international
investors.
If foreign companies are allowed to come into India for
this purpose, the companies could work really better though updated equipment
leading to minimum wastage and maximum benefits of the resources.
The other things which can be induced into the system
is rigorous competition among key players. Till now only some big corporate houses
were given most of the contracts and tenders, but with the entry of big
international heavyweights, new competition and zeal can be inculcated in this
sector of cold competition and that can do much good to the current status of
the Indian coal reserves and can help Indian transform from coal importer to
coal exporter.
Today the government needs to take these stiff steps
as soon as possible otherwise India would continue to waste a huge sum of
natural reserve due to lack of ingenious planning in dealing with extraction of
this important energy resource.
JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT
JAI MA BHARTI
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