Iron And Steel Industry Analysis

India is a developing economy where iron and steel play a very important role being the prerequisites for modern Indian industrial development. Large amounts of iron and steel is required for constructing bridges, rail tracts, railway rolling stock, ships, vehicles, various machines, power plants, airports, etc.

As important industries like Railway locomotive, Ship Building, Heavy and Light Machine, Construction, etc. depend on the availability of iron and steel, iron and steel industry accelerates industrialization and is, therefore, called the backbone of all industries.

As on 2013, with crude steel production of 81.2 million metric tons, India is ranked as the fourth largest steel producing country in the world. It is estimated that India

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 tones ingot by the time the country achieved freedom. The Tata’s, as Gandhi ji 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 disfavored this and other attempts to start indigenous industry. It was chiefly with the help of American experts that the Tata’s 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) were

The Indian iron and steel sector's energy consumption of 6.6 GCal per ton, is 50 per cent higher than the global best practice.

Its water consumption (excluding power generation, townships and other downstream operations) is thrice as high. Most steel plants were found to be non-compliant with pollution norms.

This is a result of a two year long exercise covering 21 steelmakers of over 0.5 million tons of annual capacity each. According to Sunita Narain, director general, CSE, "The poor environmental performance of this sector is a measure of the failure of the regulatory institutions in the country. Nobody is asking this sector to improve its green bottom-line. Nobody is measuring and monitoring its actual performance."

Interestingly the report finds large plants to have close to 1,200 hectares (ha) of land per million ton of installed capacity, whereas claims CSE a well-designed plant needs not more than 200 ha per million ton.

With its existing land area, the sector could ideally produce 300 million tons instead of today’s 75 million tones and should not need extra land till 2025, says