IRON AND STEEL DURING PRE- INDEPENDENCE PERIOD
Steel industry, a core of the core industries of Indian economy, started its excursion since ancient occasions. We discover romance when we take a gander at the historical record that around 1750 Alexander the Great was said to get three tons of pot steel from an Indian lord. We have also record of a Persian lord who purchased pot steel from India. In this way India has a long heritage of steel making. Although steel creation measure started in India thousand years ago, the modem steel creation innovation started working just at the start of the nineteenth century. In fact the development of steel industry in India has been spectacular simply after autonomy.
The primary effective attempt was made in 1875 in setting up an iron and steel works at Barakar by Bengal Iron and Steel Company. This was taken over by Bengal Iron Company in 1889. This was the main attempt to deliver pig iron in India through current strategies. However, the iron and steel industry in India had a real start in the year 1907 after the establishment of Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) at Sakchi in Bihar.
It was the dream of late Jamshetji Tata, the father of Indian steel industry, whose career was a genuine example of industrial romance. His dream came into reality as establishment of TISCO, the main large scale industrial unit in creating iron and steel by utilizing Latest logical strategies in India. Setting up of Indian Iron and Steel Company Ltd. in the year 1918 at Burnpur in West Bengal was another landmark throughout the entire existence of iron and steel industry in India. The Steel Corporation of Bengal Ltd. was set up in 1937 in association with Indian Iron and Steel Company for manufacturing steel.
In 1923 the State Government of Mysore set up an iron works at Bhadrabati known as Mysore Iron and Steel Works, thereafter named as Visvesvaraya Iron and Steel Ltd.
So before freedom iron and steel industry in India comprised of four units viz. the Tata Iron and Steel Company, the Indian Iron and Steel Company, the Steel Corporation of Bengal and the Mysore Iron and Steel Works. Out of these four units, just a single unit namely Mysore Iron and Steel Works was a state-possessed unit, the remaining three were in the private area.