If the CBI inquiry is to serve its purpose, it should be time-bound. Its terms of reference should include looking at alternative ways to allocate coal.
All the sound and fury in recent months over “Coalgate” — the allocation of nationalised coal blocks for captive mining linked to industries such as power to private parties — was meant to fix guilt for the corruption involved in the process on the UPA-2 government. The objective was, thus, political. It did not aim to clarify our understanding of the mechanics of corruption that occurred, its extent, or in the first place the putative pressing need to farm out coal blocks to private firms (many of which turned out to be carpetbaggers).
Hence, instituting a CBI inquiry, announced earlier this week, for the entire period in which coal blocks were given out is welcome and was imperative. The report of the Comptroller and Auditor-General, the government’s chief accountant, had pertained to a selective period that coincided with Dr Manmohan Singh’s stewardship of the government, in particular the exact time period in which the PM himself had held the coal portfolio.
This is not to say that this period was free of corruption, although the overwhelming majority of the allotted coal blocks was not mined at all. Herein lies the fundamental weakness of the CAG’s report. Its calculations relied on average costs and anticipated average revenues that did not accrue in the absence of mining activity. Hence, if the coal was not mined and lay inside “mother earth”, where was the question of corruption, as finance minister P. Chidambaram had recently argued.
As subsequent revelations showed, the corruption lay in the process of allocation itself, at least in a large number of cases. And in the allocation process were involved, besides the Union coal ministry and public sector Coal India Ltd, the ruling parties and the bureaucracies of all states where coal mines exist. That pretty much indicts all the major players in our political system, although this aspect was nearly obfuscated owing to the blocking of the Monsoon Session of Parliament.
The proposed CBI inquiry, set up at the behest of the Central Vigilance Commission, will go back to 1993 when the 1973 law nationalising coal mines was amended to allow private players in once again. The reason given was that the urgent need of vast amounts of power, steel and cement for a fast-growing economy required producing large quantities of coal at short notice, which the government companies alone could not deliver.
The irony is that not all that much coal was produced, defeating the very rationale for the move. If the CBI inquiry is to serve its purpose, it should be time-bound. Its terms of reference should include looking at alternative ways to allocate resources such as coal. Governance-related drawbacks have to be underlined as well.
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