Sarwahara

• Akanksha, ‘Sarwahara’ Newspaper #52 (1 June 2024)

(Click here to read this article in Hindi.)

The truth behind the rising electricity prices and electricity bills that lighten the pockets of common people has been revealed in a report published in ‘Financial Times’ on 22nd May 2024. In the last few years, this newspaper has published 25 detailed reports on the Adani coal scam that started in 2014. The most recent report in this series shows how the Adani Group has, on numerous occasions, bought low quality cheap coal (quality: 3500 calories per kilogram) from a mine in Indonesia and has sold it at high prices in India to Tamil Nadu Generation and Distribution Company (Tangedco) as top-quality coal (quality: 6000 calories/kilogram). In 2013, the Indonesian mining company had priced a shipment of this low-grade coal at $28 per ton. When it reached India, the same shipment was sold to Tangedco at $92 per ton. There are not just one or two but dozens of such cases yearly in which prices of lakhs of tonnes of coal have been swindled. Out of the total shipments of 2014 alone, 22 shipments have been investigated by the FT in which about 1.5 million tonnes of coal were sold at an average price of $86 per tonne, which is many times higher than the market price. Other documents also show that in 2014 alone, in a total of 32 shipments, 2.1 million tonnes of low-quality coal were delivered to Tangedco at $91 per tonne.

Arappor Iyakkam, a Tamil Nadu-based NGO that complained against the coal price scam by the Adani Group in 2018, said in its complaint that “Tangedco has been suffering heavy losses of [billions of rupees] every year over the past decade. … We must understand that this translates directly into higher power tariff for the common man and is affecting the common man greatly.” The NGO estimated that a total of Rs60 billion ($720 million) was wasted in Tangedco’s procurement of coal between 2012 and 2016. “Out of this, given that Adani supplied about half of it, the loss caused by Adani alone would be Rs3,000 crores ($360 million),” Jayaram Venkatesan, the NGO’s convener, told the FT. Whose are these thousands of crores of rupees that government is blindly funnelling into Adani’s lap? This is the hard-earned money of workers-toilers and the working masses, the tax money paid by you and me in various forms is being secretly siphoned off to Adani. It is not for nothing that Adani’s revenue has gone from $8 billion to $140 billion between 2014 and 2022! With the blessings of the Modi government, the Adani Group controls 10 listed companies in India and is India’s largest private thermal power company and the biggest private port operator. 60 percent of the Adani Group’s income comes from coal-related businesses. A report published in FT on October 12, 2023 closely examined 30 shipments in the 32 months from 2019 to 2021. In all of these, coal prices were inflated manifold, which saw an increase of $ 70 million in the total value of the shipments. The FT report states that, “In January 2019, the DL Acacia, a 229m-long bulk carrier with a South Korean owner and Panamanian flag, departed the Indonesian port of Kaliorang in East Kalimantan carrying 74,820 tonnes of thermal coal destined for the fires of an Indian power station. During the voyage, something extraordinary occurred: the value of its cargo doubled. In export records the price was $1.9mn, plus $42,000 for local costs. On arrival at India’s largest commercial port, Mundra in Gujarat run by Adani, the declared import value was $4.3mn.”

Currently, at least 21 international organisations have written a letter to Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud and the Supreme Court on 24^th May, urging them to expedite the resolution of a case filed by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) against Adani Group firms. The letter was sent in response to the said report published by FT uncovering the massive coal scam by the Adani Group. “Recent reporting in the Financial Times has provided fresh and detailed evidence of the passing off of “low-quality coal as far more expensive cleaner fuel” by the Adani Group in transactions with Tamil Nadu’s Tangedco, providing fresh evidence on “allegations of a long-running coal scam,” said the letter. Further the letter stated, “This evidence suggests that Adani has obtained “bumper profits at the expense of air quality” by repeatedly passing off low-quality coal purchased at an average price of $28 per tonne as higher quality coal to Tangedco at an average price of $86 per tonne. Considering that the Adani Group is one of India’s biggest importers of coal, the scale of the alleged scam is likely to be very large, with significant impacts on both the government exchequer and to electricity bills of the people of India,”. After witnessing the state of Judiciary under ten-years of Modi rule, anyone can comfortably guess the fate of this letter issued by renowned international organisations like Australian Centre for International Justice, Banktrack, Bob Brown Foundation, Eko, Extinction Rebellion, Friends of the Earth Australia, Money Rebellion, Move Beyond Coal, Transparency International Australia, among others.

The whole brunt of this scam of selling low-grade coal to the government at double or triple the price instead of cleaner, good quality coal, is borne by the masses. Firstly, a disproportionate and unfair amount of the hard-earned money of the masses collected by government in the form of taxes, especially indirect taxes which make up the bulk of the reserves, directly goes to Adani as payment for inflated invoices. Secondly, the increase in coal power directly affects the increase in cost of electricity making it more and more dear for the common people. Thirdly, burning this subpar coal increases air pollution manifold which leads to numerous diseases among the masses, especially the vulnerable and weaker sections get affected the most. More than 2 million people are killed in India each year by outdoor air pollution, according to a 2022 study in The Lancet, while other studies found significant increases in child mortality for hundreds of miles around coal-fired power plants. Government buys expensive cleaner coal with the sole purpose of reducing air pollution, because with the high-calorie coal, like 6000 calorie/kg, lesser quantities of it produces more energy and for the low-calorie coal, like 3500 calorie/kg, one needs to burn more quantity to produce the same amount of energy. But here, even after paying the price of cleaner, more expensive coal, they are getting subpar, poor-quality coal. The Adani Group was first accused of inflating fuel prices by the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) in 2016. Five Adani companies and a further five supplied by the group were among 40 importers named by the DRI in a notice of an investigation into intelligence that they were “artificially inflating” the value of Indonesian coal to siphon off money abroad and overcharge power companies. The notice said comparisons of export and import records “suggest huge overvaluation to the extent of 50 per cent to 100 per cent”. But the investigation was stopped when the authenticity of some documents relied on by the DRI to make its case were found by a customs tribunal to be unproven, and the DRI was found to lack jurisdiction under its narrow remit to enforce customs law. FT writes regarding this, “The unresolved nature of the DRI investigation and the apparent continuation of the alleged practices [by the Adani group] raise fresh questions about the relationship between Adani and the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.” The unprecedented growth of Adani’s wealth over the past ten years would not have been possible without the government’s connivance and will at the highest level. Modi government has shamelessly created an empire of humongous profits for a handful of select financial magnets at the expense of the public interest, satiating any discontentment temporarily by engaging them in religious and caste-based conflicts and blatant jingoism and, by diverting their attention to non-issues. That is precisely why the big capitalists, including Adani-Ambani and others, spend enormous amounts of money and resources to bring the Modi government to power so that in return they can get an open empire of reckless plunder. But for this to work, all the voices raised against this loot, addressing the issues of livelihood and rights of the people, needs to crushed and stifled by hook or by crook. We have seen such voices being labelled as ‘anti-national’ and ‘anti-religion’ and thrown into jails to rot or have been done away with in broad daylight. Remember, if Modi government comes back this time, then this exercise will be carried forward at a tremendous pace and hellish conditions will be created for the people from all sides. The fight against such forces have become synonymous with the fight for our very existence and the fight to protect the whole humanity.