From 50 Years Ago: World Bank Loan for Coal.

When Sardar Swaran Singh confirmed in the Lok Sabha last November that the Govern-ment’s coal policy had been modified to per-mit working of non-contiguous areas of pri-vate collieries, and maintained at the same time that this represented no ‘radical depar-ture’ from the Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956, it could be suspected that something was brewing, but one did not know exactly what it was. It was of course no secret that the World Bank had looked askance at India’s coal policy and that meant of course no for-eign aid from this quarter for [the] develop-ment of coal. No industrial project in the pub-lic sector would be touched by the World Bank anyway, but aid to the private sector of the industry was also ruled out, until the policy in regard to coal, which it did not ap-prove of, had been modified. Anyway, the reward has not been long in coming. An official team is flying next week to Washington to negotiate with the World Bank a loan to cover the foreign exchange cost of developing collieries in the private sector of the industry... …[One version of] the modification of the coal policy referred to above …is that there would be no longer any ceiling on coal in the private sector, but in quantitative term[s] the change so far is that the private sector will take on a million tons more than had been provisionally allotted to it a year ago in the Draft Outline of the Third Plan…