Shock and Disbelief

“10 people is all I use to handle the figure you quote...” Imagine the utter shock and disbelief that the B&E team experienced, when C. M. Verma nonchalantly trudged into the control room, matter-of-factly made that statement, and introduced himself quite bluntly, “I’m the Manager of the new Cold Rolling Mill!” Ten?!? Was that it? “Well, if you add sub-staff and cleaners, the total would come to 100...,” came the classic Verma riposte, with a deadpan professional glare. Hot versus Cold; 34,000 versus 10! That, dear critics, epitomizes the destruction of Tata Steel, as we had always known it. For the uninitiated, every steel slab (210 mm width and 11 metres length) from the blast furnace is sent first to the Hot Rolling Mill to be converted into a sheet (of 4 mm thickness and a massive 1.1 kilometres in length).

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Source:- IIPM-Business and Economy, Initiative:- Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri - 2006

WITHOUT SUBSIDIES

Cotton illustrates the problem. Without subsidies, it would not pay for Americans to produce much cotton; with them, the US is the world’s largest cotton exporter. Some 25,000 rich American cotton farmers divide $3 to $4 billion in subsidies among themselves – with most of the money going to a small fraction of recipients. The increased supply depresses cotton prices, hurting some 10 million farmers in sub-Saharan Africa alone. Seldom have so few done so much damage to so many. That damage is greater when we consider how US trade subsidies contributed to the demise of the Doha Round. Rather than offering to do away with its cotton subsidies, America offered to open up its markets to cotton imports – an essentially meaningless PR move that quickly backfired.

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Source:- IIPM-Business and Economy, Initiative:- Prof. Arindam Chaudhuri - 2006