Political convergence emerging against commercial coal mining in India

19th March 2018 By: Ajoy K Das - Creamer Media Correspondent

KOLKATA (miningweekly.com) – Trade unions operating in the India coal mining industry, irrespective of their political affiliations, are converging in opposing opening up coal mining for private miners, although their modes of protest will differ.

At one end of the scale of the opposition brewing against opening up commercial coal mining to domestic and foreign investors is the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), affiliated to the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the ruling party of the current Indian federal government, which approved reform of the Indian nationalised coal industry.

BMS, along with leftist political parties’ labour movements, the Centre of Indian Trade Unions and All India Trade Union Congress, has called for a one day coal industry strike on April 16.

However, one of the largest trade unions, Indian National Trade Union Congress (Intuc), largely a labour arm of the main opposition party Indian National Congress, has decided not to be part of the strike next month and is instead planning to move the Supreme Court against government reforms of the coal industry, which effectively ends the nationalisation of coal mining since 1973.

“A day’s strike will serve no purpose at the moment. We have already started consulting lawyers on the issue and we would definitely move the Supreme Court against the government decision,” ally of Intuc, the Indian National Mineworkers’ Federation secretary general S Q Zama said in a statement.

“The centre has assured us that government-owned Coal India Limited's (CIL's) interests will be protected; however, allowing commercial coal mining effectively means turning back on its own commitment,” Zama said.

However, a section of trade union officials pointed out that Intuc was not willing to participate in the proposed strike, largely to keep its distance from BMS, the pro-government labour arm of the ruling BJP.

Keeping a distance from BMS and, in turn the BJP party, Intuc is reckoning on getting broader political support from all political parties currently aligned against the central government and hence a broad-based movement to oppose commercial coal mining, the officials said.

The Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs, the apex body of the central government, last month approved commercial coal mining without end-use restrictions for miners, be it domestic or foreign, and billed it the biggest reform of the domestic coal industry.

As a follow-up, the government was lining up the auction of coal blocks for bidding by domestic and foreign investors and although not officially announced, as many as 100 coal blocks have been identified for bidding, industry sources said.

According to Zama, private miners will offer lower employee benefits than CIL and, with lower labour costs, it would be able to sell production at a lower price than CIL and cripple the government-owned firm in the long term.

Currently, labour costs constitute about 55% of CIL’s cost of coal production, compared with about 25% by current captive coal producers, which is expected to be the benchmark labour cost for future commercial coal miners.