Can Covid resurge sap the coal story?

The return of the Covid pandemic in a mutated and deadlier form is testing the resilience of the recovery of Indian economy which has just started to gather steam.

- Sumit Maitra & Tamajit Pain

The country used the reset triggered by the first wave of the pandemic to rework the way India’s core sector was being steered bringing in coal at the forefront of the resurgence of the economy by opening up the coal mining sector as part of the larger Atma Nirbhar Bharat initiative.

Launch of commercial coal mining came along with unshackling of coal marketing by Coal India. Many of the restrictions on the sale and allocation of coal to power as well as non-power sectors were removed.

With the pandemic rearing its ugly head once again, the path that the government have chosen, on the economic front, would surely be tested.

There is disruption in supply chain due to lockdown announced in various states as the coronavirus cases keep rising. Several states have announced stringent restrictions, including night curfew. The government is even mulling a complete lockdown if cases continue to grow exponentially. States like Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Chhattisgarh are under lockdown and economic activities are severely affected.

The current situation looks grim with even functioning of the Coal Ministry being impacted. With a large number of officials in the ministry getting infected in recent days, they are either on home quarantine or admitted to hospitals, which has forced the Coal Ministry set up a monitoring cell to help ministry officials cope with the crisis.

In this cover story we look at the early trends that are emerging that would signal the way the coal story would play out in 2021.

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