HAULING THE COAL
The present lament about the accumulation of coal stocks at colliery pitheads, criticism of the Railways and rhetorical questions in Parliament are rather unrealistic in character. That there was a transport bottleneck in the second Five-Year Plan was well known. The shortfall in transport facilities, at one time expected to be as high as 25 per cent, was not completely eliminated by double pruning the Plan. There is, of course, no reason why the bottle-neck should be concentrated on coal. But the inevitability of the Railways not being able to provide enough wagons should have been foreseen by consumers as well as suppliers. In fact, the Railways had made it clear that against the demand of 6000 wagons per day made by the Coal Controller, they would be able to guarantee only 5000 wagons. Much of the criticism is therefore pointless. This is not to say that special efforts should not have been made to transport the coal or that greater co-ordination between the Ministry of Railways and the Ministry of Steel, Mines and Fuel would not have relieved the present unhappy situation somewhat. Only that the situation was difficult to start with and that there should therefore be greater appreciation of the realities than has been displayed in Parliament. The Railways are not free from blame. As the Joint Working Committee of mining associations rightly says, the Railways have failed to move the 51 million tons they could have moved in the last year of the Plan; they have been able to account for only 49.5 million tons. This shortfall within the shortfall needs to be investigated and the industry and the public assured that everything possible is being done by the Railways to fulfil their obligations. The coal crisis has led to some doubts on this score. An interesting aspect of the present debate is its rather sombre impact on the rail and road transport controversy. The Neogy Committee recently complained that the Railways were not getting enough of high freight commodities. They will be getting even less if they cannot show that they can handle low-freight commodities better.
February 24, 1961