At first almost no one applied, because coal was available cheaply on international markets, or via Coal India, the state-owned mining giant. But as global prices rose in the 2000s, driven by breakneck Chinese growth, the value of domestic mining rights skyrocketed. More than two hundred licences were awarded between 2004 and 2009. Many were handed out to well-known industrialists. Others went to companies that, until then, had shown little interest in mining. ‘Let’s say I’m a newspaper magnate in a particular state with good connections with the minister of coal,’ Rai told me, explaining the
...more
