ABSTRACT
The agreement to construct an integrated steel plant at Bhilai with a capacity of one million tonnes of ingot steel was signed between the Indian government and the Soviet Union in February 1955. More than 1,000 Soviet engineers and skilled workers served in Bhilai during the initial one million tonne phase, and smaller numbers remained into the 1980s. Technologically, Rourkela was state-of-the-art – a racehorse compared to carthorse Bhilai, the German Chancellor boasted. The Russians in Bhilai were on a tighter leash – no alcohol, no servants, and standards of living more comparable to those of their Indian equivalents. Fraternisation was discouraged and surveillance was strict. According to Crook, the construction workers who built Bhilai, and the production workers who ran the Plant, constituted two separate migration streams, and the former were not taken on as core-sector labour.
