Government that blatantly favors Adani

The Government of India issued two order / advisories to state governments and thermal power plants. These advisories / directives are so blatant that even a blind person can see how the Government is favoring Adani and his business interests.

In the first advisory, the government made it compulsory that all coal that is to be transported to states has to have a sea transport leg. Thus if coal was being extracted in Odisha and was to be transported to Punjab, it would first be transported to the local port in Odisha, from there it would be shipped to Kandla port in Gujarat. From there it would then be transported to Punjab. This order effectively added more than 1000 Kilometers to the transport journey and also added cost to the value of coal that was being transported. Odisha is on the eastern coast of India while Kandla Port (owned and operated by Gautam Adani via Adani Ports and Special Economic Zone Limited) is on the west coast of India.

In the second instance, all thermal plants were told that they have to have at least 10% of their coal in their mix which is imported. Domestic coal is being sold at 2600 Rupees per ton while imported coal (imported by none other than Adani from Australia) is being sold at 20,000 rupees per ton or thereabout.

The government, ostensibly, issued this order because there was a local coal shortage.

This is how this present government is blatantly issuing orders that give income to their corporate friend. It is obvious that such largess does not happen without any give-and-take. How much is given back will never be known because of use of opaque electoral bonds that businessmen are buying and giving to BJP.

Vinod Chand

I am a veteran from the Information Technology industry. Having started my career in 1985 with a company that later became Aptech, I have virtually seen the whole industry evolve from scratch. I became an activist in 2001 after the dot.com bust in 2000. Banking, Finance, Credit Cards, Personal Loans and by extension economy and how money flows in the world are my areas of interest. These are the things that affect everyone, irrespective of their caste, creed, color, race, religion or nationality.

One of the most fascinating thing is how humans have created money and use it as a tool to subjugate others and how we, the common folks, suffer from this man made malaise.

I write about these things and try to separate the wheat from the chaff.

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