Digging deep into the coal crisis

Coal and power shortages are dominating the headlines. States are being asked to import coal. The common understanding is that electricity demand has suddenly surged with a robust post Covid economic recovery and an unexpected heat wave. The cancellation of coal blocks and inadequate domestic production have made costly imports inevitable. Increasing domestic production to reduce and even avoid imports altogether is imperative. The key enabler for this would be to dispense with the requirement for fresh environment clearance (this takes a long time) if the annual production is raised substantially, only the annual production in the approved mining plan would change with the reserves getting exhausted earlier.