The more things change, the more they remain the same. This truism hits a little too close to home for the BJP government as 20 power plants across India are running at a super-critical level and another seven are at a critical stage due to an acute shortage of coal. This situation is not unprecedented. The first version of this crisis played out during the UPA regime, under whose aegis 13 power plants had coal inventory lasting for less than four days in May 2013. One cannot blame market and energy experts for believing that these unfortunate episodes will not be repeated, given the stellar performance of former Union Minister Piyush Goyal, under whom the power ministry staged a turnaround.

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However, keeping power plants adequately stocked is a matter, it seems, of eternal vigilance and any let up on this front will inevitably result in things slipping into emergency mode. Power plants operating in the western and northern regions of India, particularly Maharashtra and Rajasthan, are among the worst affected. Electricity generation has been hit by as much as 40 per cent in these states because of coal-supply issues. Adding to the woes is the fact that power plants like Rajiv Gandhi (Haryana), Yamuna Nagar (Haryana), Dadri (Uttar Pradesh) and Chandrapura (Jharkhand) are in a critical state and don’t even have reserve coal stock for a day.

On the other hand, the Unchachar power plants in Uttar Pradesh, Bina and Shri Singaji in Madhya Pradesh and GMR Warora in Maharashtra have just one day’s coal stock available with them. The ministry is trying to put up a brave face and is partly blaming the flooding of coal pits and the submergence of railway tracks for compounding the woes of power plants. Goyal, who still holds the reins of Coal Ministry apart from the Railways Ministry, had in September passed the buck to the state governments and power plants. Reportedly, Goyal for the last four months has been calling on power plants to start stocking their coal reserves that will last up to 22-35 days but the power plants have evidently not been paying heed to his advice. A deeper structural problem lies at the root of this recurring crisis. It was in 2005 that the UPA government decided to open a new front of the battle against India’s seemingly interminable power crisis by putting together a comprehensive plan targetting the creation of 4,000 MW of electricity by erecting UMPPs, obviously with the participation of the private sector.

The private sector, then, unlike now, was looking at the power sector as India’s next poster boy for economic development, very much on the lines of hockey-stick growth registered by the telecom sector. In that pre-recession era, most market players threw caution to the wind and bid aggressively to win the contracts. However, soon enough, they found themselves besieged with a host of problems: Policies proved to be flawed, government red tape hindered progress, land acquisition became a sticky issue and coal accessibility was troublesome. The power sector continues to battle many of these problems to this day.