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This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Tata Iron and Steel Company Ltd (TISCO) of Jamshedpur, India. Tata Ltd is the largest corporation on the Indian sub-continent, and the iron and steel company is the second largest part of the corporation, next to the Engineering and Locomotive division. Annual production of saleable steel has been at the 1 .6Mt level since the mid-seventies. This article acknowledges the achievements of the company in the 75 years since its inception, with particular reference to its social obligations.
The chairman of Tata Iron and Steel Company, J. R. D. Tata, entitled his statement in the company's 75th annual report ? long haul'. This was a reference to the long periods of difficulty which the company has experienced in attaining its position as part of the largest corporation in India. Before looking in detail at the history of the development of TISCO, that statement is quoted in part as an indication of the economic hurdles which have been overcome.
"As our company completes the 75th year of its existence, it is fitting that we should look back upon the long road - rarely a smooth one, often a rocky one - along which we have travelled these seven-and-a-half decades. While the statistical statement presents a condensed picture of the company's progress which illustrates the slow pace of our growth and the long periods of stagnation we had to ensure over these many turbulent years, they give little hint of the immense difficulties and obstacles we had to overcome in our long struggle to establish the steel industry of India in fulfilment of the founder Jamsetji Tata's vision.
Regulated price structure
Barring the post-World War I period, when we were nearly put out of existence by massive dumping of steel from abroad and were saved only by the timely introduction of protective duties and a small subsidy for a brief period, the most serious impediment to progress we faced until last year was the insistence of successive governments, in disregard of economic realities, to fix the steel prices allowed to the Indian steel industry at about half those earned by steel producers in the rest of the world. We were thereby continuously deprived of the internal resources required...