COAL INDUSTRY-Coal India in Sunlight and Shadow

COAL INDUSTRY Coal India in Sunlight and Shadow K V Subrahmanyam ONE of the legacies the Indian coal industry inherited from its British counterpart was that the miner was paid for the volume of coal cut and loaded into the tubs while the owner was paid for the weight of coal sold by him. This practice came to an end in the UK when the authorities in the Government and the trade unions realised the inequities which this practice was fraught with and the provision of weighbridges', for weighing the coal produced in each mine was made legally mandatory. In India, however, weighbridges have not been provided to this day even after years of nationalisation except in those mines, like Neyveli, where the coal is supplied to the consuming centres direct from the mine by belt-conveyors and the mine workers, are time-rated.