Coal is considered as one of the 8 core industries in India as most of the Indian industries like the power industres are heavily dependent on the coal as a energy fuel. Thus coal plays as a backbone for many industries in india. The increased demand for coal is because it is much cheaper than other petroleum reserves and also due to the indigenous availability of the coal. 

India is rich in its coal reserves distributed across many states Jharkhand, Odisha, Chattisgarh, West Bengal, Madhya pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Tamilnadu etc. Recently several coal mines has been discovered in north east and thus even north east states contributes to the country's coal reserve. Even after having such a huge coal reserve, we still depend on imports from other country. The reason behind this is that Indian coal is not of the first grade type. Coal, often called as black fuel, has 4 types of grades - Anthracite, Bituminous, Lignite and Peat. Of this Anthracite is the best quality coal, which is not available in India. Anthracite has 80 to 95 percentage carbon content. Indian coal is mostly of the bituminous type and some belong to the 2 categories as well. So to meet the demand for high grade quality coal, India depends on coal imports from several countries of which Indonesia contributes to its maximum imports. 

Why is India facing a coal shortage??

Recently India has been facing a critical coal shortage. Even the Indian railway has cancelled many of its trains to allow the faster movement of coal and meet the coal demands of several industries. This coal shortage can be attributed to several factors.

1. Heavy rains. There has been an increased downpour in many states in India. This downpour in coal reserve states has resulted in a decreased mining and production of coal.
2. Increased power demand: the economy is in a stage if recovery as there has been a dip in covid 19 cases. This increased activity in the economy has indeed resulted in more industries coming to action which inturn has resulted in an increased power demand.
3. Heat waves and rising temperature : the rising temperature has also exacerbated the situation wherein people consume more power thus rising power demand in the country.
4. Apart from all these the ongoing russia ukraine war has also exacerbated the situation and an increase in global coal prices.

Since in India 70 percentage of its power demand in met via coal fuel, the power demand india has forced the country to resort to measures like load shedding. Even the recent data shows that India's power demand has hit a all time high of 201 GW in april last week. Also the power minister has revealed that the power plants are left with less than a day of coal. This shows how severe the situation is. So what are the ways forward? 

Way forward

Coal is a major source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and thus contribute to the global warming. So there is a need to shift our focus to other sources of energy especially renewable source of energy. India has also commited to resort to renewable source of energy in the climate summit held at Glasgow. India has been appreciated worldwide for its solar alliance initiave. So by still using coal as a fuel would be a direct blow on our commitments in the climate summit and also hinder us in achieving the SDGs by 2030. Moreover the coal crisis shows that how dependent india is on the coal supply. So its really necessary to shift to other sources of anergy. India has been focusing on the Atmanirbhar bharat concept or self reliant India and the coal dependency on other countries is indeed a big blow on our commitments.