An Open Letter to Obama

Sir

I fail to understand why your country is hell bent on having others hate you. Much of the world acknowledges that you have better governance than them. They admire your material progress. Yet they hate you. And you act like you simply can’t fathom why this is so.

The answer is simple. You may feel your system of governance, your way of life, etc is superior. But that doesn’t mean you go about trying to change others too. Or that others are supposed to ape you. If they don’t, you brand them as villains.

The most obvious example of your differences with the rest of the world, and the reason others hate you, is your foreign policy or rather its hypocrisy. You espouse democracy, human rights, freedom of speech, etc. Yet your country has and continues to support authoritarian regimes, as long as their leaders are friendly towards you. This is fine till those leaders are in power. But when their opponents overthrow them they will turn out to be anti-US. And then you cry democracy and human rights and try to bomb them out of existence. You supported the Shah of Iran but when he was overthrown by Islamists, who were not your friends, you armed Saddam to the teeth as he was fighting a war against them. Then when he was of no further use to the US and turned against another ally of yours, you tacked him and eventually overthrew him citing non-existent weapons of mass destruction. Your current ally is Saudi Arabia where an autocratic regime suppresses its people. The same is the case with Afghanistan-Taliban-Pakistan. The list is too long.

The second problem you face and end up imposing on the world at large is your handling of the Islamic world. Whether deliberately or by chance, your country periodically ends up hurting the sentiments of the ‘ultra-sensitive’ Muslim clergy. I do not rule out deliberate because it is suspected that the US administration is highly influenced by Jewish interests who would never want the rest of the world to be at peace with Islam.  

Sometimes you must risk antagonizing them if it is for a just cause, like say women’s rights. But at other times the provocation has been totally needless. Take for example the recent anti-Muslim movie. I saw the trailer and it is patently blasphemic & so obviously made by a Jew with an intention to incite trouble. And Muslims have reacted predictably. Knowing this how can your country not remove it from the internet?  I know your answer will be that you have freedom of speech in your country and hence you cannot stop people from expressing their views. However, we are not fooled by this. Your government imposes a lot of restrictions on what people can say and what they cannot. There are ways to ask Google to remove it but you don’t want to act. You can jail someone just because a threatening mail was sent to the President of the US from his IP but you can’t act against people out to disturb world peace?

Why am I so concerned? Because everything the US does affects the whole world. India has suffered due to the US’s support for jihadis against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. You have lost only one WTC and make it out to be such a big deal. India has suffered much more than the US.

That is why perhaps one day an atheist like me may also hate the US. Unless your country realizes its folly and makes amends.

Yours sincerely

A world citizen

Coalgate?

Coalgate has paralyzed an already slow-moving govt machinery. But is it really such a big scam? The opposition has reacted predictably by making shrill noises without bringing out the entire facts and not realizing all izz not well in their ranks either. There is no way that their state governments were not involved in this. The government has tried to cool things by letting loose the CBI. And now both would be hoping to save their asses.

Being in the industry, I have some perspective on Coalgate. The important question is not why a natural resource like coal was not auctioned, but how it was allotted. The scam is in the process of allotment, not in the policy. Just like in the 2G scam. And I doubt the CBI will be able to do justice to the nation on this count.

Auctioning of coal blocks is fraught with danger. Companies may pay high amounts for the blocks but most of that will have to result in increase in prices of end products like electricity. Is the government is any position to do that? NO. We are already reeling under high inflation. 

This brings me to the process of allocation where seemingly some companies were allotted blocks arbitrarily and maybe illegally. So did the private parties benefit from the allocation of coal mines and by how much?

I would say they benefited in 3 ways. One is it enabled them to lure gullible investors to give them fat valuations. Secondly, it gave them fuel security. And lastly they would be able to save cost as CIL is considered to be an inefficient miner so its prices would have been higher. I think that of these the biggest benefit is fuel security – if they are able to mine that coal that is.

So what should be done now? Cancel the allocations? Govt won’t do it, atleast for those blocks where there is some progress. If the courts do it will lead to chaos in an already chaotic industry with ominous implications for the entire economy and there will be lawsuits which will drag on for years.

Is there any solution? The CAG says loss to the government is because CIL loses out on profit. What can be stipulated is that the private companies should sell the coal to CIL, at what would have been CIL’s cost of production. There are existing benchmarks of CIL’s cost for each type of mine. Hence, the price can be considered fair. Here the private company would simply act as a mine developer & operator, with potential to make profit if it is more efficient than CIL. I don’t think anyone should have an objection to that.

But we can’t stop at this. As the companies are losing out on fuel security and would litigate. Some mechanism can be worked out to give them some sort of right of first refusal for an agreed period to buy back the coal mined by them at CIL’s final selling price. After that they would stand with the others in the queue for coal supply. They get their coal and get to keep the surplus arising from their superior operations as compared to CIL. CIL gets its ‘lost’ profit back. 

However, the wrongdoings in the allotment process must be pursued and punished. And I suspect that, just like in 2G, the courts will act and the government will try to cover up.