I recently did my training at
SAIL - IISCO Steel Plant.
Watching how steel is made was a very good experience,
as well as an eye opener. Some of the workers there work
in the most horrid conditions you can imagine. Levelling
coal on the top of coke ovens which operate at around
1200
degrees centigrade. Cleaning the red hot steel ladles for
furthur use. Pushing left over coke from the ovens. These
are a few of the many examples of super human people
working in places where we couldn't even get close because
of super human temperatures. I don't know how much these
plants follow pollution norms or how much the government
really cares, but the 4 chimneys spew toxic gases ruthlessly
into the environment 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.
A stay at the blast furnace for 5 days I think should be
enough to make a person permanently deaf. Thanks to the
most irritating and ear drum battering noises of steam which
the workers there will be bearing throughout their lives.
Another important thing I realised was that you don't
really need an engineering degree to do the type of work
that is required over there ( or for that matter any steel
plant or company ). A basic knowledge at the higher secondary
level is enough to be able to do everything that engineers
do there after learning from experience.
Among the best sights at the plant were the rolling of red
hot steel into TMT bars, angles, channels, joists, etc.
But the best scene which I saw over there was perhaps the hot
molten yellow steel with an orange tinge that poured into
the steel ladle.
Not too many people in India know about the enormous revolution going on in Myanmar (Burma) against dictatorship. And what's more, the revolution is being spearheaded by the supposedly peace loving monks. This is one of the best pic I found on the internet that best explains the magnitude of the initiative. The red sea of humanity that you see is made up by more than 100,000 monks taking to the roads to prove a point (peacefully).
