In the year 2020, the central government decided one of the myriad ways in which Bharat could become Atmanirbhar or how India could become self-reliant, was by further liberalisation[1] of the coal sector. By the end of the year, it had additionally deregulated environmental standards pertaining to fly-ash content and coal-washing. Those who consider economy to be a zero-sum game that excludes environmental considerations, hailed such steps and contended that revenue would flow in.

However, a closer inspection presents a slightly different tale. For example, ever since the auction for coal blocks began, actual revenue has fallen far short of estimates. In fact, in 2018, a report[2] found that only 3% of the projected revenue was met. The projected claim was INR 3.35 trillion, but collections amounted to INR 56.84 billion only. In the end of April 2021[3], the government itself decided to come up with project, financing policies to encourage private investment in coal mining, seeing the general hesitancy.

Another point that often finds mention is that coal is good for job creation in local communities. While this may be true to some extent, any gains in the present scenario are going to be temporary. The coal sector is fully staffed[4]; in fact, Coal India began looking at human resources restructuring for its more than 3.4 lakh employees in 2014. As a simple statement of fact, as further plants get decommissioned, it will exacerbate the already existing over-staffing problem. All this points to an unavoidable truth: trying to liberalise coal is not just bad for the environment; it is bad economic policy too.

However, reaching a conclusion is one matter. Providing alternatives is quite another. There are communities that depend on coal, and reducing dependence on coal, without investing in other forms of energy can be catastrophic. Therefore, planning is essential on two fronts: energy supply, and energy transition.

Even today, energy supply in India is plagued by distribution issues more than generation issues[5]. This is because its last-mile infrastructure is poor. A staggering 305 million people[6] still do not have access to electricity. Therefore, the primary sector where the government should look at investment is in distribution networks. Because the last-mile is generally in neglected places where private players might not find much value, such as at sub-village levels, the investment must directly come from government coffers.

Another reason for poor distribution, despite surplus production, is the debt distribution companies have taken on by supplying free electricity due to various government schemes. Governments must take immediate steps to eradicate such misuse by stopping all policies where free electricity is provided to people who are rich enough to use beyond a certain threshold.

Furthermore, for all populist schemes such as free electricity for irrigation, it must be counteracted by profit-centres. This means allowing distribution companies to diversify. It can mean allowing them to foray into broadband across the country, which is still clustered around urban areas[7]. Of the 922 million rural people in 2014-15, only 129 million had access to the internet, of which 80 million was mobile internet. Distribution companies should also be allowed to enter the off-grid electricity markets, which can be more profitable in isolated areas. It can also mean allowing them to build distribution networks in other countries, especially those that have contiguous borders with India. This will expand India’s global influence across its borders; especially in its neighbourhood, where it needs to counter a growing dependence of other countries on China.

At the same time, generation must shift from coal towards other renewables, especially where the marginal cost of production is less than coal, such as in solar energy and lithium-ion batteries. To give an estimate of the projected median Levelized Costs of Electricity (LCOE) in 2030[8], we see that while coal would be around 50 Eur/MWh in India, Photovoltaic Rooftop, Photovoltaic Utility and Lithium-ion batteries will be around 35 Eur/MWh, 25 Eur/MWh, and 30 Eur/MWh respectively. China and USA have already achieved this price inversion in the last decade and India must speed itself up.

Hence, it is not a surprise that while coal is unable to find foreign investors[9], solar energy faces no such problem, indicating investor confidence. That Dutch investors are investing in Indian solar power, a week apart from the government trying to find project finance for coal, points to the state of both energy sources in May 2021. However, transition to solar energy means building a proper global supply chain and taking a lead in the manufacturing process.

The other energy source with lower projected LCOE in the future is Lithium-ion battery. These batteries require rare metals[10] such as Lithium and Cobalt. Previously linked reports already point to nationalised banks withdrawing from overseas coal projects due to environmental impacts. They should concentrate that energy instead in investing in rare metal procurement by tying up with local investors. That would build a global footprint for India, especially in Africa and Latin America, in this sector as well. To counteract existing Chinese influence in this region, Indian banks can also take the lead in drafting trade finance requirements which can counteract unethical purchase[11].

Taking these steps will ensure that India leads in this century instead of playing last century’s game. It will create new jobs, make itself a market leader and improve infrastructure, all in a single attempt. Authorities must not squander this opportunity to become a self-reliant and environmentally responsible nation.

The author is a professional in Energy, Trade and Finance, City University London

The post A misguided attempt to revive Coal appeared first on SabrangIndia.

A common assumption that is probably finding mainstream recognition in Indian discourse these days is that secularism exists for the protection of minorities. It postulates that when the majority is secular it is something of a security that they are offering towards the minorities. However, we must check if this hypothesis is true. Thankfully, we have the contrasting case studies of Pakistan and India side by side, the former having a state religion and us, in India, without one and we can perform a thought experiment to see if secularism has any importance to the majority.  

Pakistan was created on the basis that Muslims would not be safe in a Hindu majority country, thereby casting the Hindus as antagonists. So, Muslims should have remained protected in that country better than they would have in a Hindu majority India. But as the experiment has proven since, that has not been the case and in the straitjacket of purity of being an Islamic republic, the characteristics of which have only been determined by majoritarian dogma, many others have been stopped from contributing their fullest to the nation.

Let us take the case of Ahmadiyyas as a test case. Many of them were prominent leaders of Muslim League which advocated for a separate state of Pakistan. However, after an amendment was inserted in 1974 to the constitution of Pakistan due to majoritarian demands, Ahmadiyyas are not even officially considered Muslims in Pakistan anymore. A gentleman from that community was killed recently and his killer is now seen by many as a hero over there. Many of us also know about the absurdity that Abdus Salam, the first Nobel Laureate from the Muslim community in Physics, was not welcome in his own land.

Consider the case of the Shi’ites. Nowadays, there are groups who have been targeting them, killing them and maiming them with the express purpose of ethnically cleansing them and maintaining that they are non-Muslims. They have been the target of most of the attacks against minorities in Pakistan. Would they have imagined this when Pakistan was created under the guidance of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, who was born a Shia?

Let us also look at how the Sufis have fared. Scores of holy sites have been destroyed and multiple people have been murdered all in the name of purity of religion. Festivities and celebration, which had been going on for many centuries, had to be stopped due to the threat of radical Islamists who did not consider them Muslim enough.

Above are just some examples of people who ought to not have been threatened when Pakistan was created as an Islamic republic because they too were supposedly part of the majority.

Now, imagine our country India. We rejected the two nation theory and accepted a secular nation. When more Muslims stayed back in India than who went to Pakistan, it should have been considered the ultimate rejection of that theory. However, recently, some people in our nation have begun bringing up the theory again when they talk of moving away from secularism and establishing a Hindu nation. The rationale provided is that the two nation theory based on religious majority has actually succeeded because the land got divided and therefore we must follow the same steps that Pakistan took, because while in their country Muslim rights were given primacy, we gave equal rights to all, which seems perceptibly unfair towards the Hindu majority here. But, in an attempt to level the playing field by taking an external nation into consideration, which in itself is a bizarre proposition because the locus of destiny of a country should not be influenced by external forces, are we absolutely sure that in this process we will not end up hurting the rights of many Hindus as well?

Let us first consider, for example, where the Sindhis would stand in this new alignment. The entirety of Sindh was lost to Pakistan during partition.  LK Advani, the father figure of the Ram Janmabhoomi movement is a Sindhi. So, if there is any community an aspiring Hindu nation should care for most, it is the Sindhis. However, as Sindhis worship Jhulelal, a deity simultaneously worshipped by Muslims, they are not even considered Hindus by some members of organisations which might want a leading role in guiding the discourse in a future Hindu nation, and may well qualify for ethnic cleansing in hands of purity seekers.

Take another Indic religion in Buddhism. They have lost their heritage in Islamic nations, like the Taliban who blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas. Lord Buddha is considered one of the greatest spiritual masters of India and one of the ten avatars of Hinduism. Yet, when it comes to the Jataka tales of Buddhism, because they stray from the traditional telling of Ramayana, they have been attacked for their faith. If the perpetrators could act this way in a secular nation, is there any evidence that it might be better in a Hindu nation?

Let us also not forget about the many indigenous people and local cultures with decidedly Indic roots. Some interpretations of our holiest books differ from place to place. Some cultures, such as Durga Puja in Bengal, have decidedly heterodox traditions. Imposition of food culture is already difficult as even those in power have found, considering there are places like the North East where even Hindus consume beef. Might such problems not be further exacerbated in a nation if Hinduism were to become its official state religion?

Above are just some of the issues that might visit us if we try to establish a state religion or propose a set of laws based on the major religion of our country. To establish such a code, we would need to reconcile all cultures within Hinduism, many of which are contradictory in nature. When such an attempt would invariably prove futile because of the divergence of views, we would have to discard certain interpretations which we consider to be insignificant as compared to the popular view. Those views removed from consideration, though, might be important to another section of the religion which might then mobilise against any such proposal. Hence, just as it has been observed in Pakistan which chose to become an Islamic republic; by deeming India as a Hindu nation, we risk tearing the majority itself to multiple factions which goes towards making our republic and our union even more fragile than it actually is in the present moment.

Thus, turning into a Hindu nation may narrow the acceptance of what Hinduism is and stop different strands of our religion, which currently might be in favour of the motion, from being equal stakeholders in it. They would be swayed away from contributing in the future because their beliefs may not be in line with the creed of the dominant sect, however that may be sliced and diced. This will lead to inevitable stagnation, as we have seen with our neighbours, as energy and resources will be wasted in maintaining a false sense of purity instead of letting all different perspectives contribute to a richer understanding of the religion. Persecution of innocents in guise of ethnic purity may not be a distant peril under such disequilibrium.

This is doubly so because any thought of reformation within a religion is essentially a minority viewpoint before it gains recognition and rejecting such new lines of thought leads to religious regression. Indian heroes of renaissance and reformation like Raja Ram Mohan Roy and Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, had to overcome obstacles put in the path by social conservatives who swore to the existing interpretation of religion and could count more supporters in favour of preserving the status quo than altering it. However, their viewpoints, respectively prohibition of Sati and the legalisation of widow remarriage, are no more controversial today and are accepted by all.

Becoming a Hindu nation will do nothing to tamp down on radical Islamism either. On the contrary, just as the foil of Pakistan has given a helping hand to those forces who want to radicalise Hindus, the communal forces within the Muslim community will use our trending towards a Hindu nation to become even more radical.

Hence, I contend that our country must remain secular in perpetuity not only for the benefit of minorities, but evenly so for the majority too because each thought that contributes to the majority religion is, in isolation, a minority position. Declaration of the majority religion as the state religion inevitably leads to a clash of such myriad ideologies as they seek to establish supremacy to guide the discourse within that religion. Thus, it is not the minorities who should be grateful to the majority in a secular nation, rather all of us should be grateful to the tenet of secularism itself.

As a newspaper of Pakistan observed, nearly four decades after protests stopped Dr. Abdus Salam, a Muslim Nobel Laureate, from entering a university in his homeland which designates itself an Islamic republic, just because of the heterodoxy of his faith: “That it has taken nearly four decades for this country to honour a globally renowned scientist who was one of its own, is a sad reflection of the priorities that hold sway here… For Dr Salam was an Ahmadi, a persecuted minority in Pakistan, and his faith rather than his towering achievements was the yardstick by which he was judged,” Let us not make the same mistake here in India. Let us judge people by their contributions to the nation and the global family instead ofa personal matter like faith.

*The author is CEO Indic RMC Pvt. Ltd. – Supply Chain and Human Resource Consultant

Related:

Are Kashi-Mathura mosques in the crosshairs of hardliners again?

Kandhamal 2020: We live with the national shame of impunity in perpetuity

Scapegoats and Holy Cows

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