The Business Bytes
THEBUSINESSBYTES BUREAU
NEW DELHI, MAY 26, 2025
India’s coal industry has marked an historic milestone, topping one billion metric tonnes in both production and dispatch during the 2024-25 financial year — an achievement the government hails as proof that a decade of sweeping reforms has turned the once-troubled sector into a strategic engine of growth, sustainability and global competitiveness.
Union Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy said the record output, delivered by a workforce of roughly half a million miners and many thousands more in auxiliary roles, now underpins an electricity supply that is more affordable, reliable and continuous than at any time in independent India’s history. “What we celebrate today is not a single-year surge but the cumulative impact of a series of bold policy decisions taken since Prime Minister Narendra Modi first assumed office on 26 May 2014,” he said.
Back in 2014 the sector was in “complete disarray”, the minister recalled: output stood at only 610 million tonnes and was growing at under two per cent a year, far below surging demand. The Supreme Court’s 2015 cancellation of 204 coal-block licences, once regarded as a crisis, created space for transparent re-allocation. The watershed came in 2020, when the government opened commercial coal mining to private players for the first time in nearly five decades.
Since then 11 auction rounds (with a 12th under way) have awarded about 150 blocks, driving a 70 per cent production jump over ten years and sending ₹2.5 lakh crore in premiums and royalties to state treasuries. Reddy called the auctions “a structured partnership with the private sector that finally rewards efficiency, innovation and risk-taking.”
Environmental performance, long a weak spot, has moved “to the centre of every decision,” the minister insisted. Blast-free techniques now account for 55 per cent of output, afforestation and mine-reclamation programmes have expanded, and First-Mile Connectivity projects are mechanising 90 per cent of coal loading through conveyor belts, silos and rapid-loading systems. Cabinet approval for an ₹8,500-crore coal-gasification scheme is designed to accelerate the shift to lower-emission fuel, while a road-map targets 100 million tonnes a year from underground mines by 2030 to curb surface disturbance.
Diversification is gathering pace: Coal India Ltd has taken its first stake in a critical-minerals block, and solar, wind and pumped-storage projects are under construction on former mine lands. Even so, coal remains indispensable. India’s per-capita electricity use is one third of the global average, and with the government projecting a $5 trillion economy later this decade on its way to $35 trillion by 2047, energy demand is set to soar. Coal’s share of installed generating capacity has already slipped from 60 per cent in 2014-15 to 47 per cent today, yet absolute coal consumption will keep rising for years.
To smooth supply, the ministry plans to launch the country’s first coal trading exchange, promising transparent price discovery and easier access for industry. A parallel DigiCoal initiative will blanket mines with 5G networks, AI-powered monitoring, GPS trucking systems, drone surveys and digital-twin models to cut costs and raise safety.
“Once dismissed as corrupt and inefficient, India’s coal sector is now a laboratory of modern mining,” Reddy said, arguing that the reforms position the country to play “a leadership role in the global resource economy” while balancing growth with its commitment to a greener future.
