Land of black gold

Bengal Coal to auctions: tracing a mineral’s journey

June 17, 2017 09:30 pm | Updated 09:30 pm IST

India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi
Subhomoy Bhattacharjee
Sage
₹450

India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi Subhomoy Bhattacharjee Sage ₹450

Mining is a fascinating industry which spawns several minerals and metals sectors, some as precious as gold and diamond. However, it is coal which has fired the imagination of writers and film-makers, who have set their creative works in the backdrop of underground coal mines, whose dungeon-like environs provided perfect material for soul-stirring narratives.

India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi , authored by journalist Subhomoy Bhattacharjee is no creative work. It is the outcome of a painstaking research conducted through series of interviews and extensive field tours criss-crossing the country.

The outcome is a book through whose nine chapters, Bhattacharjee has unravelled the Indian coal story. That coal was a cornerstone of industrial revolution is well-known. We also know Dwarkanath Tagore (Rabindranath Tagore’s grandfather) was one of the earliest Indian entrepreneurs and that Carr-Tagore and Company, his joint stock venture with Englishman William Carr, floated the Bengal Coal Company to mine coal. What is less known perhaps is his sharp business acumen and his ability to stay ahead of competition deploying every trick of the trade that seems common-place now but may have been rare in those days. He cultivated the influential Britons, threw lavish parties and did everything to stay ahead.

The book also tells us about the linkages between the development of the Indian coal industry and the opium-trade established by the British with China and other Asian nations. “The cargo was opium, the fuel was coal and Tagore’s was the largest coal business in the country...” It is through such narration that Bhattacharjee traces the course that Indian coal ran from its pre- nationalisation days to nationalisation and then to the era of auctions and the CAG report.

However, he makes it clear that till coal burst onto the national scene “it hardly ever received the priority attention.” Status quo was the way whether it be in respect of coal production, shortages, mafias calling shots in coal belts or on coal pilferage. Reforms never seemed to be on the top of the agenda.

His book cannot be called a tome in the dictionary sense of the word. However, its pages do make for an important reference point for any researcher. But a few factual inaccuracies strike a jarring note like for instance the year of CIL’s IPO (Chapter VI).

A reader also would have liked him to record for posterity the progress at the mines allocated under the auction process. This reviewer saw little mention of that. Or did she miss out on that part?

India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi ; Subhomoy Bhattacharjee, Sage, ₹450.

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