**2. Outsourcing: state-of-the-art in India**

As aforementioned, the extant literature on outsourcing in the Indian context mostly highlights outsourcing of IT, IS, and BPO that are offshored to Indian IT firms by the MNCs located overseas [43, 44]. However, studies on outsourcing practices by the Indian firms may be inadequate in the extant literature. According to the outsourcing survey by Deloitte, the business functions that are recently being outsourced are IT, operations, finance, human resources, legal, real estate/facilities, procurement, and sales/marketing support [45]. As reported in this survey, while IT, finance, and operations are expected to be heavily outsourced in offshore locations, business functions such as procurement, human resources, sales and marketing, legal, and real estate/facilities are likely to be outsourced within the national boundaries (India). Some of the publicly known cases of outsourcing by Indian firms are (a) IT outsourcing contract to IBM by Airtel [46], (b) outsourcing of business process and technology by Indian banking sector [47], (c) outsourcing of mining operations by Hindustan copper Ltd. and Mahanadi Coalfields Ltd. [48, 49], (d) outsourcing of back-office operations to Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) by Passport Seva, Ministry of External Affairs [50], (e) outsourcing of passenger services by Indian Railways [51], and (f) human resources management system outsourcing contract to TCS by the Indian Railways [52]. Some of the recent cases of outsourcing reported in Indian context that are more transformational in nature are relocation of high-tech industries like pharmaceutical industry outsourced to India [53], study of professional service outsourcing in India while examining the impacts of task traits (complexity, connectivity and security) and their alignments with inter-firm governance control mechanisms in improving service capabilities by Jayaraman and Liu [54], the impact of employer branding strategy on employee engagement consideration a case of a business process outsourcing (BPO) in India [43], and R & D offshore outsourcing to India, the service provider, taking into account their innovation performance gained through learning from their clients for a biopharmaceutical industry [55].

**27**

requirement.

nation as per the demand.

*Outsourcing: State-of-the-Art in India and an Insight to Coal Mining Industry*

**3. Importance of coal and the coal mining organization in India**

of coal from the increasing power plants, steel, and cement industries.

country because of several reasons as mentioned below [57]:

and is the single largest coal producer in the world.

• ICMO accounts for about 74% of the Indian coal market.

**4. The Indian coal mining organization and outsourcing**

Mineral and mining sectors play a pivotal role in the economic development of a country as they are the principal source of raw materials for an array of industries. Among them, coal is the most dominating energy resource and remains as the lifeline for fuelling Indian industries since its first use in the 1700s. Coal mining constitutes a share of 80% of the total mining in India while the remaining 20% includes mining of various other ores such as gold, copper, iron, lead, bauxite, zinc, etc. [56]. At present coal contributes about 52% to the India's total commercial energy needs and about 66% of the country's power generation and is expected to remain the most viable energy resource contributing to sustainable economic growth for the years to come [56–59]. As India is among the top three fastest-growing economies in the world, the coal mining industry in India plays a substantial role in fulfilling the uprising demand

The state-owned coal mining organization of India came into existence in the year 1975 after the Coal Mines (Nationalization) Act in the year 1973 taking over the private coal mines by the Government. For the purpose of this study, this organization is referred to as the Indian coal mining organization (ICMO). ICMO owns seven coal producing subsidiaries along with a mine planning and consultancy company located in eight provincial states in India. They are Eastern Coalfields Limited (ECL), Bharat Coking Coal Limited (BCCL), Central Coalfields Limited (CCL), South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), Western Coalfields Limited (WCL), Northern Coalfields Limited (NCL), Mahanadi Coalfields Limited (MCL), and Central Mine Planning and Design Institute Limited (CMPDIL) [57]. Ministry of Coal (MoC) is responsible for the development and implementation of policies and strategies for the entire coal sector that are exercised through ICMO and its subsidiaries along with Singareni Collieries Company Limited (SCCL) which is a public-sector undertaking company jointly governed by Government of Andhra Pradesh and the Government of India [56]. ICMO is of strategic importance to the

• India is the third largest coal-producing country in the world after China and USA where ICMO contributes to about 81.1% of India's overall coal production

• Out of the 52% of India's primary commercial energy which is coal-based, ICMO alone contributes to around 40% of the primary commercial energy

• ICMO maintains the stability of coal prices to the Indian coal customers.

The main business of the organization is based on the identification of coal reserves, coal exploration, design, optimization and application of operational activities for excavation of coal while distributing them to industries across the

As coal is an important source of primary energy in India, the demand for coal has always been on the rise. The demand for coal has further aggravated in view of

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.96420*
