“TISCO became biggest steel industry with in the British Empire”. Imagine
you are a worker in TISCO. Write a narrative on your daily life . Highlight
how your life has been affected by the British policies.
Answers
The Tata senior wasn’t constructing the township for high and mighty of those days, but for the workers of Tata Steel, an industry first of its kind in Asia which was carved out of the Jungles Once, when he was in Manchester, J N Tata attended a lecture by philosopher Thomas Carlyle in which he said, “The nation which gains control of iron soon acquires the control of gold.”
Perhaps Jamshedpur's fate was sealed at that point in time.
JN Tata decided to establish the first steel plant in India here and his relentless efforts made it possible and the steel plant began production on 1908. But apart from giving employment and planned the way of living to the workers of this industrial town, Jamshedpur also played the key role in saving the two world wars for British and their French and American allies.
When railway tracks made of Tata steel saved war for Britain
By 1914, the Tata Steel hadn’t grown much, but the advent of World War-I resulted in its growth overnight. The British were conceding grounds in Egypt, Mesopotamia and East Africa facing the Germans and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. One reason for Britain conceding large grounds was that it was unable to mobile its troops from one theatre of war to another.
Tata Steel took good care of this drawback and produced 3,00,000 tonnes of steels which made possible for the British to lay a mammoth 1500 miles of railway tracks that changed the fate of the war in favour of the India’s colonial masters.
Workers worked overtime
Years later John Keenan who worked with TISCO for 25 years wrote about how the workers worked relentlessly without tiring to produce 8,000 tonnes of five-inch-round steel shells and harnesses for the horses that pulled field guns. After the war, a British parliamentary report also acknowledged the crucial contribution.
“It would have been impossible to carry on the campaign without the iron and steel of India.”