You don’t have to be a miner to know that mining is destructive — not only for nature but also for those who engage in it. It’s smeared with socio-political and economic consequences. Coal has even seen governments being toppled and prime ministers being questioned. And that explains why Coal Minister Piyush Goyal described his first 100 days in the post as a “baptism by fire”.

So, any book on the crisis-ridden sector elicits curiosity. And when a journalist pens it, the level of curiosity gets even higher — will it tell an inside story, which everyone wants to know or which some know but can’t write about? Or will it be a statement of facts or just the right mix of fact and fiction? India’s Coal Story: From Damodar to Zambezi by Subhomoy Bhattacharjee (Sage, ₹450) is heavy on facts with a play-it-safe approach.

In the opening chapter ‘Ole King Coal’, Bhattacharjee says: “India’s coal reserves have always proved to be too hot to handle for its governments. It owns the fourth largest reserves in the world. It should have provided a first-class opportunity to keep the economy driving ahead at full speed; it has instead been its first class curse.” If only Bhattacharjee had not stopped short of elaborating on the opportunity lost. Though he deals with it in detail later on in chapters ‘Coal on Sale’ and ‘Notes from Auditors’, on the arbitrary coal block auctions and the subsequent court verdict and fresh auctions, he treads cautiously.

Bhattacharjee manoeuvres the reader through the coal story — right from how it entered the Indian economic life and become so important to its history, to the importance of Damodar river banks in this trade and the role of Sir Dorabji Tata. There’s an interesting compilation of facts.

It is only towards the third chapter, ‘Nationalisation of Problems’, that today’s reader connects with the issue. Bhattacharjee says: “On a dense summer afternoon in Delhi, the coal sector was nationalised by the Parliament. The legislation finally got done a deed that had been in the works for more than two decades. Appropriately enough, on May Day, 1973, under PM Indira Gandhi’s watch, the act to bring all coal production under the government, thus bringing to a temporary close a roller coaster journey for the sector was signed by Prisdent VV Giri, who had soon acquired the moniker Prime Minister’s President.”

It would again become topsy-turvy soon, Bhattacharjee recounts. The momentum is built in the subsequent chapters, but he goes subtle again. Not opinionating, but putting across facts, even though he connects the dots between coal and power. “On the same day in August 2012 when the explosive coal audit report by the CAG was tabled in Parliament, another report was also tabled. This was a performance audit of ‘Ultra Mega Power Projects under the special purpose vehicles (Ministry of Power),” he mentions.

Interestingly, Bhattacharjee does subtly talk about the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s style of functioning, sans judgement. Vinod Rai, the then CAG, does get an elaborate mention in the book, and rightly so, after all it was his stint that brought the much-talked about ‘Coalgate’ to light. And for a change, Bhatacharjee discusses in detail how honest bureaucrats were made scapegoats. But, then, the book moves on to the Paris climate accord and the positioning of the Modi government’s energy ambitions. Writing on energy is not easy, particularly when there are too many complexities and high stakes. Bhatacharjee does a neat balancing act to his credit.

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