India boss finds there's no such thing as a free lunch after all

Mumbai

BILLIONAIRE Naveen Jindal ran what was once India's most valuable steelmaker worth almost US$15 billion. That has now shrunk to less than US$2 billion, a fall exacerbated by the nation reversing its policy on coal.

The rise of his company, Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, was built on coal blocks handed out by the government on condition companies invest in industrial projects and pay royalties. That ended last year when the courts cancelled the permits.

Beside the loss of investors, he's fighting a court investigation into alleged irregularities in winning rights to a coal block in eastern India. It all got worse on May 27 when the company reported its first annual loss in at least a decade.

Mr Jindal is one of several industrialists that constructed empires around a government policy starting in 1993 to give away rights to coal deposits. The idea was private businesses would do a better job developing the blocks. This in turn would boost supplies of coal needed to raise electricity generation. Jindal mined more coal than any other company that received the lan…