Despite been known as a country with one of the largest coal reserves in the world, India is struggling to match the coal demand supply equation, resulting in power crisis in the country. From 100 million tonnes in 2012, India's coal imports are slated to touch 220 million tonnes by 2016, making it one of the largest coal importing countries in the world. So what exactly is going wrong, given that the country is sitting on reserves of over 100 billion tonnes, adequate to meet the demand for at-least next 70-80 years? The answer is Operational Inefficiency in Coal India Ltd (CIL) mining operations, which is mainly on account of low level of mechanization in the industry. It is anticipated that Coal India's improvement in efficiency will come only when the coal sector is opened for commercial mining because that is when Coal India will see its competitors in the mining space and that will force certain amount of market, certain amount of improvements under market pressure. Coal India Ltd (CIL) lags international peers in productivity despite having a high proportion of open-cast mines