For modern India’s iron and steel industry August 27, 1907 was a red-letter day when the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) was formed as a Swadeshi venture to produce 120,000 tonnes of pig iron. The TISCO plant at Sakchi (renamed Jamshedpur) in Bihar, started pig iron production in December 1908 and rolled out its first steel the following year. TISCO had expanded its production capacity to one million tonnes ingot by the time the country achieved freedom. The Tatas, as Gandhiji said, represented the "spirit of adventure" and Jamsetji Tata, in the words of Jawaharlal Nehru," laid the foundation of heavy industries in India". The British rulers disfavoured this and other attempts to start indigenous industry. It was chiefly with the help of American experts that the Tatas started their industry. Its childhood was precarious but the war of 1914-18 gave it a fillip. Again it languished and was in danger of passing into the hands of British debenture holders. But nationalist pressure saved it. In 1918, soon after the war, Indian Iron and Steel Company (IISCO) was formed. The then Mysore government also decided to start an iron works at Bhadravati. While IISCO started producing pig iron at Burnpur in 1922, the Mysore Iron and Steel Works took about 18 years to start its plant. Meanwhile, the Bengal Iron Works went into liquidation and merged with IISCO. The Steel Corporation of Bengal (SCOB) formed in 1937, started making steel in its Asansol plant. Later in 1953, SCOB merged with IISCO.
Prime Minister Nehru firmly believed that "no country can be jpolitically and economically independent unless it is highly industrialised and has developed its resources to the utmost". Nehru’s ideas about India’s development were broadly incorporated in free India’s first Industrial Policy Resolution adopted by the Contituent Assembly in 1948. The resolution officially accepted the principle of mixed economy. Industries were divided into four categories. In the first category were strategic industries which were made the monopoly of the Government. In the second category were six industries which included, among others, coal, iron and steel.
It was decided that new units would be started exclusively by the government in the public sector without disturbing the existing ones in the private sector. Eighteen industries, including heavy castings and forings of iron and steel, ferro alloys and tool steel were covered by the third category and the rest of the industries by the fourth. In sum, the government committed itself to the development of basic steel industry while the private sector was to benefit through the establishment of downstream units which would use pig iron, billets, blooms and flat products to be made by the public sector steel plants.
In keeping with the spirit of the resolution the Government decided to start a chain of steel plants all over the country in the public sector. The first such plant was set up at Rourkela in Orissa. The second came up at Bhilai in Madhya Pradesh. It was followed by a third at Durgapur in West Bengal. Each of these three plants had an initial production capacity of one million tonne ingot. Durgapur was followed by a steel plant at Bokaro in Bihar. The onward march of Indian steel did not stop at Bokaro. The fifth public sector steel plant was set up at Visakhapatnam in andhra Pradesh. As a matter of fact, the country was dotted with steel and steel-related plants in public and private sectors, like Alloy Steel Plant, Salem Steel Plant, Kalinga Iron Works, Malavika Steel Ltd., Jindal Vijaynagar Steel Ltd., to name only a few. About the same time TISCO launched its two-million-tonne expansion programme.
The Government’s Industrial Policy had undergone changes ____ once in 1956 and then in 1991. The resolution modified in 1956 brought changes in the category pattern and listed more industries for the public sector than did the earlier one, though it was not harsher towards the private enterprise. In the new industrial policy announced in 1991 iron and steel industry, among others, was included in the list of industries reserved for the public sector and exempted from the provision of compulsory licensing. With effect from May 24, 1992 iron and steel industry was included in the list of ‘high priority’ industry for automatic approval for foreign equity upto 51% (now 74%). Export-import regime for iron and steel has also undergone major liberalisation. The freight equalisation scheme was withdrawn removing freight disadvantage to States located near steel plants.
The new policy has already borne fruit. The finished steel pdroduction in India has gone up from mere 1.1 million tonnes in 1951 to 23.37 million tonnes in 1997-98 despite overall economic slow-down in the country.
