Hey,
Picture this: a dusty, sooty coal mine with its questionable environmental compliance and broken commitments to the people it displaced proudly flaunting a five-star badge – like a luxury resort on TripAdvisor.
This is what government’s new star-rating policy looks like. At a grand gala event in New Delhi last month, the Coal Ministry awarded shiny star ratings to coal mines across the country for their performance across aspects such as compliance, safety, resettlement, etc.
These ratings, the ministry insists, are a step toward transparency and ‘healthy competition’.
But here’s the fun part: these ratings are self-assessed. Mines score themselves, like students grading their own exams. The ministry does a random spot-check on just 10%, because evaluating mines, we’re told, is like picking potatoes at the market.
The absurdities don’t end here – there’s much more packed into this five-star story by Meenakshi Kapoor, winner of our 2nd TRC Investigative Reporting Fellowship. In this, you’ll also find a friendly peer review system, the reality of high ratings versus ground realities, and the incentives – or lack thereof – influencing the performance of these coal mines.
Click here for a deep dive into this government rating scheme that is helping coal miners pat themselves on the back.
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Furquan Ameen,
Editor, The Collective