I would look first at the raw material, not at the finished product. The draft policy sets a target of 604 million tonnes of steel capacity by 2047, against roughly 220 million tonnes today, and it states that raw materials account for nearly 65 to 70 per cent of steel production costs. India is largely self-sufficient in iron ore but imports around 92 per cent of its coking coal. The plan proposes to secure supply through domestic mining, coal washeries, overseas asset acquisitions, long-term agreements, and artificial intelligence to optimise coal blends.
What matters here is not merely the announcement of capacity. The production of raw materials, as I have described it, is expanded only in sudden jerks, before being violently contracted once more; and when raw materials become dearer, the industrial capitalists get together and form associations to regulate production. As soon as the immediate impulse has gone by and the general principle of competition reigns sovereign once more, it is left once more to prices to regulate supply. The draft's instruments — overseas assets, long-term agreements, strategic outreach — are attempts to place the supply of coking coal on a footing other than the momentary price. Whether they succeed depends on conditions the plan itself cannot command.
The question is who controls the conditions of production. The policy projects iron ore demand of 772 million tonnes and coking coal demand of 236 million tonnes, and it intends to lock in access to high-grade reserves through foreign assets and joint ventures. The expansion of large-scale production for distant markets casts the entire product into the arms of commerce, and credit grows with the scale of industrial capital itself. I see in this not a simple story of national ambition but a concrete arrangement of ownership and supply, whose stability is not guaranteed by the plan's targets.
