As a first step, steel is being introduced in a big way into the engineering curriculam in premier institutions in the country. Other areas of potential consumption are the rural areas and agro-industries. Farmers would be advised to use steel for various purposes including storage of food grains.

The ministry is also taking steps to increase steel exports and reduce the dumping of defective and secondary steel from European countries like Belgium.

The Union minister of state for steel, B K Tripathy, told newsmen here on Monday that the commerce ministry is looking into this issue of steel dumping and taking suitable legal action.

India is also facing anti-dumping charges from the US. Though, with 3 million tonne of export, India has only just one per cent share in the world steel trade, the development commissioner for iron and steel, R K Prasannan said, the developing countries are viewing India as a potential threat to their domestic industries. u "India has the installed capacity to produce 36 million tonnes of world class steel," he said.

Though the country is short of the Ninth Plan export target of 6 million tonne of steel, the ministry hopes to increase exports further from the current level, he said.

The 2000-2001 production is expected to be 32 million tonne and consumption 28 million tonne against 26 million and 24 million tonne, respectively in 1999-2000.

Inaugurating a workshop on `teaching package in structural steel' at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Chennai, the minister said, one of the major reasons for the less use of steel in the country "appears to be that the curriculam of the civil engineering education in the technical institutions did not focus, to the desired extent, on steel-use in structural designs. With the result, architects and civil engineers coming out from universities had less knowledge in structural steel designs and therefore had reduced inclination to work with such materials or designs even specifically".

Now, a new teaching resource package has been formulated by a committee of experts from institutions like IIT and Anna University. The package has been finalised under the leadership of Dr R Narayana of the Steel Construction Institute, UK.