Apparently, China's coal reserves are predominantly located in the North East, and not the population centers which encompass the coast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_in_China#/media/File:Map_of_China_coal_resources.svg
There are plenty of small deposits near the population centers though. In India, most of the coal is deep inland or under the Thar desert (and of very poor quality to boot).
In any case, the development of India's electric capacity will be of great import. Any ideas on what shape that might take?
Basically, would importing coal or crude oil make more sense?
It absolutely makes sense for India to import coal and oil. Indeed, today India gets most of its coal from Indonesia and Australia.
Not only are prices lower than domestic coal, quality is higher and transportation more convenient.
Could they even develop a nuclear policy similar to that of the French?
I don't see why not, though it might take a while to scale up nuclear technology. The French get c. 80% of their electricity from nuclear, and reaching 80% nuclear for a grid as big as India's means an awful lot of nuclear reactors and those suckers take time to build.
So does non-market pricing. Without any real price discovery you tend to get large inefficiencies. You have great difficulty figuring out if you are actually benefiting from the production or not.
No argument there. The question is, what distorts prices more, corruption, over-regulation or under-regulation? I came across a very interesting paper a few years ago (no idea who it was by or where you might find it, I'm afraid) that argued that the reason corruption was so damaging to economies was precisely because it interfered with price discovery.
I don't know how true it is, but it is certainly an interesting way of looking at corruption.
But certainly, I think an honest bureaucracy can be reformed more easily to keep the red tape to the minimum needed to provide a level playing field. I think it is no accident that societies with endemic corruption seem to accumulate rules in an out-of-control way.
As such, I think an honest bureaucracy running an oppressive license raj would be less harmful in the long run than a dishonest bureaucracy running a lean set of regulations.
fasquardon