Chapter 421: Sense of Oppression
The steel plant is near an intersection and is surrounded by a high wall.
In front of it is a muddy open space where trucks covered with canvas pass slowly every day.
Although otherwise unremarkable, the Reddy Steel Works brochure is every bit as polished as the resort's.
Ron had received one when he proposed to visit the steel plant two days ago.
The cover features a flower made of steel bars. When you touch it, you can clearly feel its rough texture, which contrasts sharply with the smooth paper.
In the brochure, a skyscraper made of concrete and glass rises into the clouds.
It was the brainchild of an advertising agency, showing that the factory produced steel bars used in the construction of apartments and office buildings.
In this picture you don't see any symbols representing the workers who made these steel bars.
But it still serves as a reminder of the connection between this ordinary, unremarkable steel plant and the international metropolis.
This steel plant is just one of countless inconspicuous nodes in India's modernization process, which has attracted large numbers of people from remote areas to come to work and produce materials for urban construction in another distant place.
Perhaps the workers who built these materials into a modern metropolis were the same people who walked out of the village of Kusel.
Ron came to this factory full of sharp and piercing metal collision noises, with the sole purpose of visiting the production and understanding the lives of the workers.
The factory yard was filled with the smell of smoke and grease. The conveyor chute on the roof that cut through the sky suddenly started to creak and then stopped suddenly.
At first glance, the factory seemed a very confusing place. Aside from the noise coming from everywhere, the entire factory seemed eerily empty.
The factory entrance seemed quite lively, with security guards constantly searching workers leaving the factory and recording the license plate numbers of trucks entering the factory.
But when Ron walked into the factory, he didn't see many people.
The factory's administrative building is a two-story, white-painted concrete structure that appears abandoned.
Through its small windows, the office workers sitting inside could not be seen at all.
There is also a temple on the factory grounds, which, although very clean and well-maintained, also appears deserted.
There are large and small workshops scattered throughout the factory, each covered with a thick layer of coal dust.
Here, pig iron ore is processed through a complex process into heat-treated finished products.
When Ron glanced at the workers in the workshop, they seemed so small compared to the equipment they were operating.
He could only barely see their humble figures through the firelight and the thick smoke pouring out of the furnace.
"How many people are there in the factory?" Ron asked.
"More than a thousand migrant workers, all of them are obedient and don't cause trouble," the factory manager said with a smile.
"How come I can't see so many people? There don't seem to be many workshops." Ron looked around.
"Some are in the dormitory, some are at work. Mr. Sur, do you want to go into the workshop and take a look?" Manager Rao didn't care much.
"Okay, let's go in and take a look."
The rolling mills in the factory are continuously processing steel ingots into heat-treated finished steel bars.
Only when Ron walked in did he begin to understand a little bit about what was going on inside the factory.
This is the heart of the factory, a huge, open workshop emitting deafening noise and hot air blowing from furnaces reaching 1200 degrees Celsius.
Through the smoke and noise, the workers he saw looked as if they had just crawled out of hell.
Their faces were wrapped in tattered cloth to protect them from burns from the heat.
In this huge workshop filled with roar and heat, they all became dwarfs without exception.
Here, workers seemed to have become steel bars processed by machines. At the head of the rolling mill, Ron saw a worker using long metal tongs to load steel ingots into the furnace.
On the other side of the vast factory, two more workers, their faces covered with tattered cloth, were using the same metal clamps to remove rebar from a fast-moving conveyor belt.
The steel bars that had just come out of the furnace were still glowing red with flames. The two of them, like drunken dancers, carefully picked up one end of the steel bar and worked together to move it to the side of the factory.
Only when they are too exhausted to breathe do they take a break. Among the workers holding metal pliers is the protagonist of the entire factory - steel.
Modern engineering and exclusive technology licensed from a German company melts them into a red liquid.
Ron saw them twisting and deforming on the conveyor belt, making a hissing sound as they passed through the water pipes.
The water in the pipes is used to cool the surfaces of the liquids and give them toughness and hardness, which is important for steel as a construction material.
At that moment, the conveyor belt seemed to have turned into a fiery snake from hell, spitting out long tongues, and the workers became its slaves.
If the rolling mill is the heart of the entire factory, then this red, beating fire snake is its soul.
Ron, wearing a safety helmet, was shocked by the huge steel workshop.
It's not that he doesn't have factories that are larger than this, but the machines there are usually small and sophisticated.
The rolling mill in front of you is like a monster, and the heavy oppressive feeling makes you feel breathless.
"Where are all the steel bars produced here used?" Ron glanced at the red workshop.
"Some of the large cities being built will also go overseas."
“How’s the production?”
"It depends on market conditions. At its peak, we can produce millions of tons of steel bars every year."
The factory manager, Rao, didn't tell us about the current output, but it was obviously not as optimistic as it was at its peak.
Ron didn't dwell on it too much. The workshop was so hot that his shirt was soaked after just a few minutes.
After a quick look around, he walked out of the workshop. For a moment, he felt that the sun outside had become a little cooler.
"I heard that the steel business is not doing well now?" Ron walked towards the administrative building.
"Yes, the whole market is not good now."
"This steel mill has had a tough year, hasn't it? The international steel price is only $200 a ton, down more than a third from last year."
"This is all America's problem. They caused the financial crisis," Rao said confidently.
"USA?"
"Yes, all financial crises are caused by the United States!"
"Ha, why do you say that?" Ron asked with interest.
"Finance is a demon. Sooner or later it will devour real industry. This is a Western conspiracy."
Ron almost laughed out loud. Regardless of Manager Rao's financial skills, he was very vigilant.
Rao's office, on the second floor, is staid, just like his views on finance.
Inside were several metal boxes, a few tables and chairs, an old computer and an inkjet printer.
There is a calendar on the wall and a picture of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth.
In addition, there is a photo hanging on the wall, which shows an elderly couple, said to be the deceased parents of the factory owner Tim Reddy.
There was a coconut on the filing cabinet with six dried-up palm leaves on top, a variation of a palm and a coconut.
Here Ron also learned some details about the steel plant's operations, such as its profitability.
The output of the steel plant under your feet this year is only about 500,000 tons, half of which is exported and half is sold domestically.
The price of domestic steel now fluctuates around US$180, slightly lower than export products.
The total sales volume is roughly over 90 million US dollars, less than 100 million US dollars.
Based on this information, and with the help of his assistant, Ron was able to roughly guess the profit of the steel plant.
The main expenditure costs of the plant are ore, electricity, coke, as well as labor and equipment depreciation.
The Reddy family mines the iron ore themselves, which is relatively inexpensive, but they have to procure their own electricity and coke, which are significant expenses.
India's power grid is unstable, so the state needs to build a 100-megawatt coal-fired power plant. Coal and coke also need to be purchased from abroad, but Goa does not have such resources.
Adding it all up, the total cost is about $120 million.
With this calculation, not only is there no profit, but there is also a loss.
Well, I lost a lot.
Ron knew that the Reddy family was in serious trouble.
"Can I visit the workers' dormitory?" he asked on a whim.
"Are you sure you want to go to that kind of place?" Rao was very surprised.
"Just looking, not going in."
Ron knew that most of the factory workers belonged to the lower class, and there were many Dalits and untouchables there.
As elites, they shouldn't be interested in those places.
"Well, if you insist," Rao said without much enthusiasm.
For those who come to Kuthal village and find work at Reddy Steel, the factory is their whole world.
Here, they work in 12-hour shifts, day and night.
Their food, clothing, housing and transportation are all closely related to this factory. Every day they either work hard in the workshop or rest in the simple residence between the coal warehouse and the factory wall.
The factory does not charge workers for accommodation. Most of the 1,000 workers in the factory are concentrated in two rows of concrete cubicles with asbestos tile roofs.
Because the workers' homes are located in the most remote part of the entire factory, you may not be able to reach their homes even if you walk around the entire factory.
The most important thing is that no one except the workers would go to that place.
In fact, there was a reason for not going there. The workers' housing was the dirtiest and most miserable place Ron had ever seen in his life, even dirtier than the worst slums he had ever seen.
Two rows of simple staff dormitories are separated by a low concrete wall with drainage ditches on both sides of the wall.
The corridors between the dormitories were littered with garbage, and even the corridor in front of the house was filled with all kinds of messy items.
Broken chairs and fans, discarded clothes, vegetable peelings, leftovers, empty bottles of liquor and cheap soju.
There was a permanent smell of feces in the air, and the whole place seemed shrouded in a gray shadow.
To be honest, just standing outside was enough to make Ron back off.
The slums in Mumbai are not as chaotic as this. Although they are poor, they are full of laughter and joy.
There is only death and zombie-like figures here.
Just as he was about to take a step, someone came to inform him that Gary Reddy wanted to talk to him.
Ron breathed a sigh of relief. This damn place was really a dreadful place to stay.
(End of this chapter)
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