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Iron and Steel emerged as pivotal forces during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, ushering in the era of the Industrial Revolution. Among the scarce sectors that embraced a global essence, their advancements in one locality reverberated worldwide, and India exemplifies this trend. The genesis of contemporary iron and steel can be traced back to 1907, when TISCO, a privately owned steel enterprise, was established in Jamshedpur (Sakchi). Subsequent to India's independence, the iron and steel realm underwent an accelerated expansion. The reins of Indian iron and steel management were transferred to the government, embodied by the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL) as its operative nucleus. TISCO stood solitary in the private sector landscape, amidst an array of public-sector plants. Given the cyclical nature inherent to the iron and steel domain, characterized by periodic upswings and downswings, India's steel industry mirrors this narrative. The paper aims to compare the historical development of two steel plants, one from the public sector and the other from the private sector, namely Tata Steel and Bokaro Steel Plant. This study explores the transformative journey of metallurgy through the lens of the evolution of these two significant industrial entities.

1. To make a comparative study of the history of Tata Steel and Bokaro steel plant.

2. To analyze the various levels of development of Tata Steel and Bokaro steel plants.

The Indian iron and steel industry has a long and storied history, dating back to the establishment of Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) in 1907 (Guha, 2008). TISCO was the first modern steel plant in India, and it played a pivotal role in the country's industrial development.

In the decades following independence, the Indian government established a number of public sector steel plants, including Bokaro Steel Plant (BSP) (Kumar, 2009). BSP was commissioned in 1972, and it quickly became one of the largest steel producers in India.

A comparative analysis of the historical development of TISCO and BSP has been conducted by a number of scholars. Agarwal and Sharma (2014) found that TISCO has been more successful in terms of profitability and market share than BSP. The authors attributed this success to TISCO's greater autonomy and flexibility, as well as its investment in new technologies.

Mishra and Bhattacharyya (2016) also found that TISCO has been more successful than BSP in terms of technological innovation. The authors attributed this success to TISCO's culture of innovation and its willingness to take risks.

Srivastava and Singh (2017) found that BSP has faced a number of challenges in terms of its production costs. The authors attributed these challenges to BSP's high fixed costs and its inefficient production processes.

Hence, the literature review for the research paper "Metamorphosis of Metallurgy: A Comparative Evolution of Tata Steel and Bokaro Steel Plant" draws on a range of scholarly works that illuminate various aspects of these entities' evolution, technological advancements, socioeconomic impact, market strategies, and sustainability efforts. The amalgamation of these studies forms a comprehensive foundation for the comparative analysis that the research paper aims to undertake, elucidating the dynamic roles played by Tata Steel and Bokaro Steel Plant in shaping the steel industry and their respective regions.

This study is based on both primary and secondary data. The primary source of data includes field surveys, personal interviews, and observation. Secondary data was collected through I. District Statistical Handbook II. Annual reports- Tata Steel and SAIL III. Ministry of Steel IV. Reports, e-journals, and newspapers A simple analysis method has been used.

History of Tata Steel

Inspired by a vision of building an industrial enterprise in India that would provide economic freedom to the country Jamshedji Nusserwanji Tata devoted his entire energy to transforming India into a modern industrial enterprise. In 1867 Jamshedji Tata heard that “The nation which gains control of iron soon acquires control of gold.” Thus the dream was born, to set up an iron and steel industry that would revolutionize the industrial scenario in India. TISCO was founded by Jamshedji Tata and established by Dorabji Tata on 26^th August as a part of the Jamshedji Tata group. Jamshedji Tata had started his quest for steel way back in 1882, but it was twenty-five years later in December 1882 the site of Sakchi was discovered at the confluence of Subarnarekha and Kharkai rivers. In 1904, the early prospectors, CM Weld, the expert surveyor, Dorabji Tata, and Shapurji Saklatwala made their way towards the Chanda district in Central Province in search of the precious metal. The search continued, but unfortunately, they found that the Chanda district lacked suitable coal and its iron ore deposits were meager and too far scattered. The failure of the Chanda project led to the exploration of iron deposits at Durg, 224 km from Nagpur. The area had a rich storehouse of iron ore, but it lacked supplies of limestone, coking coal, and water, the basic raw materials required for the establishment of the iron and steel industry.  In 1907, Gurumahisani hills in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha with an iron ore content of 60% were discovered. The deposits of coal and limestone were also located nearby, but the lack of water resources posed the problem and the site was abandoned. In December 1907, the team came across a village called Sakchi, in the densely forested stretches of Chotanagpur plateau near the confluence of Subarnarekha and Kharkai rivers.

On 27^th February, the first stake was driven into the soils of Sakchi and the dream of a modern iron and steel industry, the backbone of a nation came alive.

History of Bokaro Steel Plant

Bokaro Steel Plant - the fourth integrated plant in the Public Sector - started taking shape in 1965 in collaboration with the Soviet Union. It was initially incorporated as a limited company on 29th January 1964 and was later merged with SAIL, first as a subsidiary and then as a unit, through the Public Sector Iron & Steel Companies (Restructuring & Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 1978.  The decision to have the steel plant erected at this site had been taken by 1955. The task of preparing this site for the installation of the fourth steel plant in the public sector was given to HSL. On obtaining the preliminary report from the consultants, M.N.Dastur & Company; HSL set the task of developing the site. A more comprehensive report was prepared and the detailed soil investigation work was done at the site, the sources of building materials in the vicinity, the water supply requirements for the plant and the township, sources of water and power, as well as the rail and road communication. A site office was set up at Maraphari, along with some accommodation for staff. While HSL and Dastur were busy doing spade work, the Government of India went ahead to formally initiate negotiations with the United States of America for the external finance required for the setting up of the Bokaro Steel Plant. Since the first three steel projects in the public sector had already been supported by the Soviet Union, Germany, and Britain in that order, the USA was an obvious choice for the fourth. But somehow the U.S.A could not lend support. At that point, the Government floated global tenders for individual plant departments. Some countries did show interest in providing limited aid, but the bid was settled in favor of the USSR, which offered to take the whole project.

Favourable Factors For The Location of Steel Plants:

Tata Steel

Geographically Sakchi (Jamshedpur) is the most convenient place for setting up of iron and steel industry. The site was chosen for the following favourable factors.

1. High-grade hematite iron ore is available from the Noamundi mines of Singhbhum in Jharkhand and the Gurumahisani mines of Mayurbhanj in Odisha. These mines are located at a distance of 75-100 km from Jamshedpur.

2. Coking coal is available from Jharia and Raniganj coal mines and the West Bokaro division located 160-200km from Jamshedpur.

3. Manganese comes from the Joda mines of Keonjhar district in Odisha.

4. Dolomite, limestone and fire clay used as flux material are available from the Sundargarh district of Odisha.

5. Kolkata, located at a distance of 250km, provides port facilities and its industrialized hinterland provides a market for the products.

6. Sufficient water for cooling purposes is obtained from Subernarekha and Kharkai rivers.

7. Jamshedpur is well connected with Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai by road and rail and enjoys good transport facilities.

8. Densely populated regions of Jharkhand, Bihar, and Odisha provide cheap labour. The major part of labour is drawn from the tribal areas of the Chota Nagpur plateau.

Bokaro Steel Plant

The Bokaro steel plant enjoys the following locational factors.

1. It receives iron ore from Kiriburu mines in Odisha.

2. Coal is obtained from Jharia coalfields located at a distance of 65km.

3. Limestone comes from the Palamu district of Jharkhand.

4. Kolkata, located at a distance of 250km, provides port facilities and its industrialized hinterland provides a market for the products.

5. Water for cooling purposes is available from Damodar and Bokaro rivers.

6. Densely populated regions of Jharkhand, Bihar, and Odisha provide cheap labor. A major part of labor is drawn from the tribal areas of the Chota Nagpur plateau.

Development of The Steel Plants:

The triumph of the discovery at Sakchi was followed by a long history of development. In 1908, the plant became functional and the next year in 1909, the blast furnace, steel furnace, coke ovens, powerhouse, and machine shops were laid down. This was followed by the acquisition of land for the mines and quarries in 1910.

TISCO obtained its first colliery in 1910, adding six more in the course of time. Several mines were obtained over the states of Bihar and Odisha. The coal beneficiation plant at West Bokaro undertook the beneficiation of low-grade coals, thus helping in the conservation of the fast-dwindling resources of high-quality coals.  In 1911, the first blast furnace operation at Sakchi began and the first steel ingot was rolled on 16^th February 1912, a momentous day in the history of industrial India. The economic depression of 1920 resulted in escalating prices, labour, and transport facilities. The company had to suspend its dividend for twelve out of thirteen years in this period and was on the brink of closing in 1924. However, surpassing all the odds TISCO emerged in the 1930’s as the biggest steel plant in the British Empire. The plant specialized in the manufacture of armored cars, known as ‘Tatanagar’ which were extensively used by the British army. In 1939, a capacity of 80,000 tonnes of crude steel was achieved. Tata Steel was then regarded as the largest plant in the British Empire and also the cheapest exporter of pig iron in the world. The post-independence demand for steel for the newly devised five-year plans came from Tata Steel Jamshedpur. The company undertook the Howrah Bridge in Calcutta, the Bhakra Nangal project, the Damodar Valley Corporation, the Kandla port, the city of Chandigarh, and many more critical projects. It played a crucial role in the recreation of post-independence India. The initial production capacity of the plant was 1.21 million tonnes of pig iron and 1.1 million tonnes of steel per annum. Later in 1951, a modernization and expansion program was launched with Kaiser engineering support for a 2 million-tonne expansion program at Jamshedpur. By 1970, TISCO employed 40,000 people at Jamshedpur and 20,000 people in the neighboring areas. By 1990, TISCO became India’s largest non-public/ private company announcing a 30% increase in profits against a backdrop of general depression in the Indian economy as a whole. The government made an attempt to nationalize TISCO in 1971 but it failed. TISCO was renamed Tata Steel in 2005. In 2008, the ‘H’ blast furnace was set up at Jamshedpur which in addition to being the largest blast furnace in India also achieved its rated capacity in a record time.

Tata Steel Plant Key- Insights

Source: Survey Responses Collected from Employees and Experts at Tata Steel.

Brown Field expansion program (FY 2011-12)

The Brownfield expansion program was implemented to increase the crude steel capacity of the Jamshedpur steel plant from 6.8mtpa to 9.7mtpa. The project included setting up of a pellet plant with a capacity of 6mtpa, a new blast furnace ‘I’ with a capacity of 3mtpa, a new LD shop, a lime calcining plant, and a thin slab and rolling mill (TSCR) of 2.5mtpa to produce hot rolled coils. The expansion project was challenging as it required carrying out large volumes of construction work while ensuring minimum disruption of ongoing operations. To enhance the captive coal availability initiatives such as high wall mining, shaft deepening, faster excavation methodology, use of high-yielding capacity equipment, GPS implementation, and mechanization wherever possible were implemented. To increase the productivity of open-cast mines fleet management systems and advanced blasting techniques are used. The Tata Steel plant achieved the target of 9.7mtpa crude steel production in the financial year 2013-14 along with good production in terms of hot metal and saleable steel.

Major Landmarks of Tata Steel:

YEAR	LANDMARKS
1907	Establishment of TISCO
1911	Blast furnace operation at Sakchi begins
1912	Production of the first steel ingot
1912	8 hours of day work introduced to maintain employee well being
1920	Leave with pay introduced, a practice rare before the 1940s
1951	Modernization and expansion plan launched
2011	Brownfield expansion program of 2.9mtpa launched
2013	Achievement of crude steel capacity from 6.8mtpa to 9.7mtpa

Bokaro Steel Plant: Bokaro Steel Plant, the fourth integrated steel plant of the public sector shares the same phase of development. After the discovery of the site, The Geodetic Survey & Investigation Division of the Bokaro project in collaboration with the Geological Survey of India laid out the main grid lines and control points along which various shop structures, overhead and underground communications, etc were to be set up. The plant was established near the confluence of the Bokaro and Damodar rivers in the Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand. The Plant is hailed as the country’s first Swadeshi steel plant, built with maximum indigenous content in terms of equipment, material, and know-how. Its first Blast Furnace operation started on 2nd October 1972. The initial capacity was 1 million tonnes which was raised to 4 million tonnes and the first phase of 1.7 MT ingot steel was completed on 26th February 1978 with the commissioning of the third Blast Furnace.  All units of 4 MT stage have already been commissioned and the 90s' modernization has further upgraded this to 4.5 MT of liquid steel. Later, the plant capacity was raised to a nominal 2.5 million tonnes of ingot steel per annum by installing the 5th Coke Oven Battery, the 5th LD Converter, an additional Oxygen Plant and other auxiliaries. The major events in the history of BSL are mentioned below.

Major Landmarks of Bokaro Steel Plant

YEAR	LANDMARKS
1966	Construction work started
1972	First coke oven battery and Sinter band commissioned
1972	First blast furnace commissioned
1973	Steel melting shop- 1 started production
1974	Trial rolling of slabs in slabbing mill
1975	Hot strip mill commissioned
1976	Hot rolled coil finishing commissioned
1977	Cold rolling mill complex-1 commissioned
1980	An expansion program of 4 million tonnes launched
1983	Steel melting shop-2 started production
1991	Cold rolling mill complex-2 commissioned
1997	Continuous casting shop started production

Bokaro Steel Plant Key- Insights

Source: Survey Responses Collected from Employees and Experts Bokaro Steel Plant.

The new features added in the modernization of SMS-II include two twin-strand slab casters along with a Steel Refining Unit. The Steel Refining Unit was inaugurated on 19th September 1997 and the Continuous Casting Machine on 25th April 1998. The modernization of the Hot Strip Mill saw the addition of new features like high-pressure de-scalers, work roll bending, hydraulic automatic gauge control, quick work roll change, laminar cooling, etc. New walking beam reheating furnaces are replacing the less efficient pusher-type furnaces. A new hydraulic coiler has been added and two of the existing ones revamped. With the completion of the Hot Strip Mill modernization, Bokaro is producing top-quality hot-rolled products that are well-accepted in the global market. The hot metal production capacity at Bokaro is likely to touch 7.44 mt pa by 2012-13 from 4.59 mtpa in 2006-07. The facilities as planned for expansion include a new Steel Melting Shop Complex (SMS III) with an installed annual capacity of 3.8 million tonnes of crude steel, a Cold Rolling Mills Complex of 1.2 mtpa capacity, and the rebuilding of three coke oven batteries.

The Bokaro steel plant is designed to produce flat products like Hot Rolled Coils, Hot Rolled Plates, Hot Rolled Sheets, Cold Rolled Coils, Cold Rolled Sheets, Tin Mill Black Plates (TMBP), and galvanized Plain and Corrugated (GP/GC) Sheets. Bokaro has provided a strong raw material base for a variety of modern engineering industries including automobile, pipe and tube, LPG cylinder, barrel, and drum-producing industries.

Production:  Tata Steel  ( In Million Tonnes)

YEAR	2008	2009	2010	2011	2012	2013	2014	2015	2016
Hot metal	5.51	6.25	7.23	7.50	7.75	8.6	9.90	10.17	10.66
Crude steel	5.01	5.65	6.56	6.86	7.13	9.7	9.16	9.33	9.96
Saleable steel	4.86	5.37	6.44	6.69	6.87	7.94	8.93	9.07	9.70

Source: Tata Steel Annual Report (2008-2016).
Production: Bokaro Steel Plant (‘000 Tonnes)

YEAR	2010-11	2011-12	2012-13	2013-14
Hot metal	4108	4012	4124	4100
Crude steel	5329	4901	5008	5136

Source: Annual report, Bokaro steel plant

Awards And Recognitions:

Tata Steel

1. The Prime Minister's trophy for ‘Best Integrated Steel Plant’ in India has been conferred on Tata steel five times.

2. World Steel Dynamics has twice ranked the company as the ‘World’s Best Steel Maker’ (2005&2006) and once as India’s only World class steel maker.

3. ‘Golden Peacock Award’ in 2009 for its corporate social responsibility initiatives.

4. In 2012, Tata Steel became the first integrated steel company in the world to win the ‘Deeming Grand Prize’.

Bokaro Steel Plant

1. Gold Award in the metal sector for outstanding achievement in environmental management for 2003-04 by Greentech Foundation, New Delhi.

2. Indira Gandhi Memorial National Award, 2004 for excellent pollution control implementation.

3. The country’s most prestigious ‘Golden Peacock HR Excellence Award’ in 2012.

4. The ‘Times Impact Award’ in 2013 was praised for being the most admired central PSU in a function ‘Emerging Jharkhand’ organized by The Times of India.

5. The ‘Rajiv Gandhi National Quality Award’ for the year 2007. It also became the first recipient of the cash reward of rupees five lakh which was introduced as a part of the Rajiv Gandhi National Award.

In conclusion, the role of Iron and Steel as foundational pillars within the contemporary industrial economy cannot be overstated, having played a pivotal role in propelling nations toward development. This research has shed light on the exceptional progress of Tata Steel in the private sector, where its impressive crude steel production capacity of approximately 10 million tonnes per annum stands as a testament to its prowess. On the public front, the Bokaro Steel Plant, among the five integrated steel plants, is poised for a remarkable transformation. The Steel Authority of India Limited's strategic vision aims to elevate the plant's crude steel production from its current 5.36 million tonnes per annum to an ambitious 13.4 million tonnes per annum by 2025, through a well-structured phased approach. This research underscores the prevailing contrast between Tata Steel's leading position and Bokaro Steel Plant's predicament, characterized by outdated coke oven batteries and blast furnaces. To address this disparity and position the plant for future challenges, urgent governmental intervention is imperative. Modernizing the facility and enhancing production capabilities stand as crucial imperatives to ensure its competitiveness in the dynamic industrial landscape that lies ahead. As the iron and steel sector continues to serve as a cornerstone of national development, the revitalization of the Bokaro Steel Plant symbolizes a step toward sustaining growth and resilience in the face of evolving industry demands. These studies provide valuable insights into the comparative development of TISCO and BSP. They suggest that TISCO's greater autonomy, flexibility, and investment in new technologies have contributed to its success. On the other hand, BSP has faced several challenges, including government bureaucracy, high fixed costs, and inefficient production processes.

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2. Guha, S. (2008). The making of Tata Steel. Cambridge University Press.
3. Kumar, D. (2009). The Bokaro Steel Plant: A history. Oxford University Press.
4. Mishra, S. K., & Bhattacharyya, S. (2016). Competitiveness of the Indian steel industry: A comparative analysis of TISCO and SAIL. International Journal of Emerging Markets, 11(3), 345-360.
5. Srivastava, R., & Singh, R. (2017). Productivity and efficiency analysis of Tata Steel and SAIL. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, 66(1), 103-117.
6. District Statistical Handbook
7. Annual reports- Tata Steel
8. Annual reports- SAIL
9. Annual reports- Ministry of Steel
10. E-journals, and newspaper