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A broadsheet feature on Jamshedpur: Here is a model town

Nilanjan Dey

One day, the fields will stay green and the earth black, sweet and wet. Our children will grow tall on that earth... -- Victor Das, in the book Jharkhand -- Castle Over the Graves

JAMSHEDPUR, the bustling Steel City as we know it, has morphed into a major industrial hub in eastern India from a small cluster of settlements, populated by ethnic people. Its growth is largely a result of its association with the Tatas, especially the pioneering Tata Iron and Steel Company and its founder Jamsetji Tata.

The city is situated deep inside Jharkhand's mineral heartland -- the ageless deposits of iron, copper, coal and mica. Over the decades, the involvement of the Tatas has grown, and new companies in the group have set up production facilities here.

Today, it is the industrial face of Jharkhand, the second most important city in the state after Ranchi, the capital. Its strengths lie in the seven lakh-strong population and its proximity to the satellite industrial hub of Adityapur.

Industry is synonymous with Jamshedpur. At one end of the spectrum is the organised sector, dominated largely by the Tatas, while at the other are smaller units, many of them ancillaries.

Besides Tata Steel, the Tata outfits that have set up shop here include Telco, Tata Cummins, Tata Yodogawa, Tata Ryerson, Tinplate and Tata Pigments.

Among the smaller industries located here are auto components, forging, hoses, aluminium extrusion and special steel. Incidentally, the local outsourcing done by Tata Steel in 2000-01 involved business worth about Rs 18 crores.

The adjacent industrial area of Adityapur needs special mention in this context. It has a number of units that provide spares to the steel major. There are structural fabricators as well as processing facilities for steel by-products (such as coal tar). Heavy Engineering Corporation (Ranchi) and Hindustan Copper (Ghatshila) are close by. The steel plants at Bokaro and Rourkela are not too far away either.

Jamshedpur, the township, needs to be managed well, especially with regard to its civic infrastructure. And the Tatas have a full-fledged town planning wing to do this. Around Rs 100 crore is spent annually on this front.

``The idea,'' says Mr A.N. Singh, Deputy MD (Corporate Services), Tata Steel, is to cater to basic needs such as water, roads, power, education and health. In the initial days, these services were largely meant for Tata employees, but, over time widened in scope and ambit.

Mr Singh is hopeful that ``at the end of the day, all this will add value to employee performance.'' He, however, adds that the prospects of future development in the city are linked to the extension of Tata Steel's lease. The company has been pursuing t he extension issue with the government for some years now.

According to Mr S.M. Hussain, GM (Town Services), Tata Steel, the population of Jamshedpur has grown from a few lakhs in 1991 to about seven lakhs today. ``In a way, the city has become a preferred destination even for people who are not really associate d with the Tatas.''

So, what are the primary concerns before the group's town management operations? Mr Hussain mentions a few -- encroachment on land, non-renewal of lease and a general inadequacy of facilities such as large entertainment and market complexes. ``We try to run the city like any other municipal authority. However, there is little scope of getting funds from the State and we do not intend to approach multilateral agencies like World Bank,'' he says.

The 740-bed Tata Main Hospital, which was started in 1907, is among town planners' top priorities. The hospital provides healthcare to over 40,000 employees of Tata Steel and their families as well as to members of the general public. The annual expendit ure on it is about Rs 25 crores.

In 2000-01, the Tatas' expenditure incurred on Jamshedpur was approximately Rs 120 crore, a part of which -- about Rs 45 crore -- was offset through revenues collected.

The recent increase in population in the city can be partly attributed to establishment of new commercial ventures. Over the years, employment opportunities, both direct and indirect, have grown. Tata group companies have done their bit on this score.

At the top of the heap, of course, is the Rs 7,800-crore turnover Tata Steel, complete with its hot strip and cold rolling mills. In 2000-01, its production of saleable steel topped 3.49 million tonnes, six per cent higher than the previous year.

The sales turnover of the steel division was over Rs 6,400 crores in 2000-01. The company has certain allied businesses as well -- tubes, bearings and ferro alloys.

In the days to come, Tata Steel plans to restrict capital expenditure to cover only essential balancing facilities, replacements and renewals according to the company's annual report for 2000-01.

Incidentally, since 1980, when it began the first of its four phases of modernisation, almost Rs 12,000 crore have been spent in acquiring equipment and technology. The company is also looking at acquisition opportunities in select steel and allied busin esses.

Tata Power has a generation capacity of about 307 MW capacity in Jharkhand. In 1996, a 67.5 MW power plant was commissioned in a greenfield site at Jojobera (now near Lafarge cement unit). Two facilities of 120 MW were recently set up in order to meet th e growing requirement of power in and around Jamshedpur.

The company is said to be keen on installing an exclusive unit for catering to the state electricity board. This, it is felt, will help the state emerge as a major power producer in the coming years.

Tata Metaliks, which produces pig iron (location : Kharagpur) aims to become a solutions provider for its customers. It hopes to become a supplier of choice through niche product and service offerings. The idea is to assist customers to optimise their op erational performance.

Its solution programme involves increasing the melting rate of metal, providing training to foundry supervisors, helping to reduce production cost of castings and rejection rate of finished castings.

Tata Pigments, which currently caters to the all-India market for synthetic iron oxide pigments, focuses on eastern and north-eastern regions for cemplus dry cement paint. For this company, the market for flooring colours is chiefly in the southern and e astern regions. In 2000-01, Tata Pigments achieved a record production of pigments & flooring colours -- 3,111 tonnes compared to the previous year's 3.078 tonnes.

Tata Yodogawa (Tayo), was promoted in 1968 by Tata Steel with Japanese technology to manufacture rolls. It, too, notched its highest-ever production of over 10,3000 tonnes of finished rolls in 2000-01. Of these, about 3,000 tonnes were exported. The comp any also entered the finish-machined forged rolls market.

Some of the other ventures closely linked to Jamshedpur are Tata Ryerson, The Tinplate Company of India and TRF (earlier known as Tata Robins Fraser).