Building up the ' Mother Industries' ( Tata Steel )

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HERE are certain corporations the world round, which stand out from their fellows. They need not be the largest or the most prosperous in their country or even in their given field but their achievements and traditions are epochal and in peoples' minds identify the trade or industry to which they belong with themselves. 

They may be in trade or commerce opening up new frontiers and new territories, such as, for instance, the East Asiatic Corporation of Denmark, or they may be established in one place in a basic or key industry. The Tata Iron and Steel Company is such a corporation. It is part of the geography and landscape of India-as much a part of her as her great mountain ranges and rivers. 

The little forest village of Sakchi as much as the rolling hills of Chhota Nagpur have all contributed to her greatness. The Tata Iron and Steel Company broke new ground not merely as a pioneer in steel manufacture in India but also in the sociological experiment of adapting the native races and peoples and absorbing them into a modern manufacturing works and town.

2. The growth of the Company has depended as much on industrial self reliance as on inventive innovation by its technicians and scientists, its physicists and geologists. The basis of this development was laid down with the initial planning of the project for the manufacture of steel when Mr. Jamsetji Tata determined that the plant should incorporate the latest develop ments in steel-making, then known in the world at large, coupled with the fullest utilization of Indian resources in men and materials. This concept of industrial activity has influenced Tata planners and managers through the sixty years of its existence.

3. Thus the greatest of all Tata enter prises and the first modern steel plant in India was planned and set up amid almost insurmountable obstacles at a time when even its village industries were primitive. And, within a decade of pouring the first pig iron, the Tata Steel Works produced the steel rails to mobilise Britain's war effort in Egypt and Mesopotamia in the First World War. Jamshedpur also produced the first special steels for munitions and shells to the then exacting British War Office standards without any assistance from that Office or from the British Steel Industry. In a public tribute to the Company in 1919, the Viceroy said he didn't know what the Government would or could have done without the Tata Steel Works.

Inventive Activity

4. Both the Second World War and the two recent national emergencies of 1962 and 1965 led to spurts in inventive activity. The contributions made by Tata Steel to the war effort are too well-known to require detailed accounting.

 It is enough to say that the multifarious demands for tool steel, alloy stot and ordnance were all met by the painstaking work in Tata Steel Metallur al Department, first by making experi mental heats and establishing the chemical composition and heat treatment required to develop and improvise special properties and finally by manufacturing them in commer cial quantities The range of steels included both high-alloy and low-alloy steel .

A production unit for high-alloy steel com prising a half-tonne, high-frequency furnace and forging hammers, was also commissioned to develop the know how of processing and production The development of armour plate started from very inadequate infor mation of what was required. No Know-how was communicated to the Company. Several alternatives were developed and processed by the Company and tested on a firing range .

The staff engaged in the activity had to acquire a good deal of proficiency in all the related aspects of the problem before success crowned their efforts. The result was the light armour plate used in constructing the Tatanagars, famous in the Middle East campaign Simultaneously, the Company undertook the production of substantial quantities of high speed steel and other strategic material produced for the first time in India.

 It was in this period too that the creativity and innovative genius of Tata metallurgists at Jamshedpur saw its finest hour in the manufacture of more than 110 varieties of special steels required for war purposes. A new bullet-proof armour steel was successfully developed for armoured vehicles made in India. Special steels were also developed for armour-piercing bullets and shells, for machine guns as well as for rifle and machine gun magazines. Research was pursued successfully for welding chrome molybdenum steel required for aircraft. The advice and assistance of the Company's experts were placed fully at the disposal of the Government for their own problems in making special steels for military uses.

5. Metallurgists and chemists successfully pursued a line of research for the production of ferro-tungsten and ferro-vanadium at Jamshedpur.

6. In 1942, research began on the production of special steels and alloys, resulting in the development of a number o special tool steels, a new composition armour plate steel and various alloy steels.

Exotic Alloys

7. To reduce the Company's dependence on imports, Company technologists success- fully concluded experiments for the mana- facture of raw materials and other ancillaries for making so like fluorspar, fire bricks magnesite hricks and silica bricks In 1932. kilns were created and put into operation for making bricks from magnesite obtained from the Company's mines in Mysore These bricks replaced imported Austrian magnesite bricks with a marked reduction in costs.

Self-Reliance

8. Such progress in native inventiveness was not possible without foresight and an instinct for self-reliance and self-sufficiency on the part of the early Tata planners From the inception of the Works, the Company created its own skilled labour force out of persons who were primitive artisans and farmers by world standards. 

To produce the first steel in India as ago, the Company employed several thousand workers, of whom only about 200 were foreigners To replace these as well, the Company established the Jamshedpur Technical Institute in 1921 and a Chemical Laboratory at the Works even earlier. But the Company did not rush headlong into this process of Indianisation without making sure that it had itself built up the technical skills in steelmaking. The Institute, which has by now trained more than 15,000 technicians became a powerful instrument for Indianisation.

 Nearly 2,000 of them were trained for the various steel plants and heavy engineering units in the public sector. Economists acknowledge that an industrial unit is measured truly not by its capital invested but by the technical skills it promotes among its workers. 

It is here that Tata Steel's pioneering contribution to India's industrial civilisation is truly remarkable. By 1939, the Tata Steel Works, using its own technology, had become self-sufficient and self-reliant in steelmaking and was one of the lowest-cost steel producers in the World." This, alas, was before the era of multiple taxes, ecsses and duties between the point when the ore leaves the pit's head and the finished steels roll on to the collection lines plus excise duties plus sales taxes from that point onwards.