A Simple Talk on the Manufacture of Iron & Steel

Iron is the world's most important and oldest metal on which the whole structure of modern science and civilisation has been built up. No other metal is found to play such an extensive role commencing from domestic use to industrial applications. It is the only metal which is highly magnetic in character and the whole of Electrical Engineering is based entirely on the property of magnetism. No other metal has the hardening capacity as iron and its alloys. Ships, Aeroplanes, Motor Cars, Railways, Locomotives and Carriages and Wagons, Power plants, Bridges, massive building structures etc. are all made essentially of iron and its alloys. In other words, there is hardly any article required for our daily use which has not been produced either from iron or by means of iron. No country in the present day world can achieve a leading industrial and economic position without extensive resources and proper utilisation of iron. India's contribution to the production of this basic metal is only about 1% of the total world's output. This is enough to depict to what extent we are backward and poor compared to other countries of the West. But the position was not so bad when India was at the zenith of her prosperity from the Vedic Civilisation of the Aryans to Islamic rule. The late great Indian economist Mr. Justice V. R. Ranade in his "Essays on Indian Economics" (First edition pp. 159-160) wrote on Indian Iron & Steel Industry the following.