Hyderabad (Deccan) Company

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The Hyderabad (Deccan) Company, Ltd. was a company founded by London financial circles under the leadership of Messrs. Watson & Stewart in January 1886 for the purpose of mining in the Indian princely state of Hyderabad . After almost three years of negotiations, it received an exclusive right to search for minerals until the end of 1891, as well as a 99-year concession for all types of mining of the found supplies throughout the state. At the beginning only the coal fields of Singareni , about 200 km east of the capital, with two minable seams were known to be minable . Small amounts of iron ore, talc (near Deodorg), grenades and diamonds, which were found in the old mines of the Golkonda Empire, gold (near Raichur ) and mica were found and mined later . The coal concession was sold on December 23, 1920 to the semi-public Singareni Collieries Company . Best & Co. took over management and sales . In 1945 the state of Hyderabad took over the majority of the shares. This company still exists today as a state enterprise - SCCL.

Foundation and financial scandal

Roller grid and reading belt for coal (Singareni, 1928)

WC Watson and J. Stewart were behind the founding, who in the late 1870s enabled the IPO for the construction of the Nizam's Guaranteed State Railway . Already at that time the award of a mining concession was in the room. The company issued 100,000 shares with a face value of £ 10 each at inception. Of these, only 7,500 were fully paid in and a further 7,500 half paid in and placed on the stock exchange; the two initiators only contributed £ 25,000. A dividend of 6% was promised. Neither a sales prospectus was issued nor an official application for listing on the stock exchange. The majority of the shares remained with the initiators and their friends, including Abdul Huq, who received a quarter of the unspent shares. In 1887/88, by means of sham trading, it was possible to push the price of the little-demanded shares up to £ 13-14. By June 1888 around 55,000 shares had been sold to 700 investors. The on-site investment was just over £ 6,000.

The Minister ( Sadr-id-Maham ) Abdul Huq was appointed as the representative of the Nizam Asaf Jah VI in 1887 . Sent to London for the anniversary celebrations, as he was the longest- serving member of the council immediately after the resignation of the Divan Salar Jung II . Abdul Huq came from a humble background and was employed in the police force, where he received a salary of 400  HRs. had moved up to the police chief ( kotwal ) and was then appointed to the council of the country, responsible for police. At this point he was already extremely wealthy. He had been instrumental in the successful placement of the railroad loan, for which he had received £ 16,000. Before his departure, Abdul Huq had received an order from the Nizam to purchase shares to the value of £ 125,000 for the ruler from his bank accounts in London, which was actually not advisable given the state of public finances. Watson, Stewart and Huq pretended that the shares were difficult to obtain, and 1000 shares were then delivered in two tranches, one of which was only half paid, from the inventors' holdings at a price of £ 12. These shares were actually those intended (free) for the minister. He sold them to his masters, making a profit of £ 132,000 (including 5% commission). When this became known, the Nizam released Abdul Huq on April 11, 1888, who fled Hyderabad immediately to Bombay .

When the practices - this was not yet illegal at the time, but was considered immoral - became known in London, the question arose of the legality of the concession, which had been approved by the India Office . Shares fell to 7½ in April, soon afterwards below 6. A parliamentary committee of inquiry was soon set up at the initiative of Henry Labouchère to clarify this . In the meantime, Abdul Huq ceded his property in Bombay, valued at over £ 150,000, to the Nizam to avoid prosecution. The committee of inquiry produced an extensive, little meaningful report whose main purpose was the Viceroy Lord Dufferin , his officials, the resident John Graham Cordery and British private secretary to the Nizam, Colonel Marshall, who had grossly neglected their duty of care, a clean bill of health issue. The license was not revoked by Parliament. Despite this history, the mining company developed into one of the few successful industrial companies in Hyderabad outside of the textile sector. Processes initiated by the Nizam dragged on for decades.

It was agreed that for the years up to 1892 the company would have a total of 107,000 HRs. had to pay to the state treasury, in the following years 8  Anna per ton (1016 kg) had to be paid for the first 100,000 tons, but at least 30,000 HRs p. a. In the case of higher delivery rates, the output rose to a maximum of 1 HR / ton. The cost of extraction (for billing purposes) was set at 2/11/11 HRs. The cost of the police in the mining area was shared between the state and the company at a ratio of 3: 7.

business

Strutt shaft (formerly Osman Pit ) in Singareni (1928)
E-Werk (supplied three-phase current at 25 Hz, 2200 V) 1928

The main line of business has always been coal mining in the Singareni mine. The following were mined: In 1887, the first year, 3,259 tons, 1891 144,668 tons, ten years later production had risen to 421,218 tons. In 1904 it was 419,546. and fluctuated between 481,000 and 506,000 in 1910-12. At the beginning of the 20th century the price per ton in Calcutta was between 2⅛ and 4⅜ Rs. The degradation product had a carbon content of 55% with 14% ash and a calorific value of approx. 27  MJ / kg. The total amount of coal mined from three shafts ("22," "23," "Strutt") by 1928 reached 17 million tons. The SCCL, which is responsible for coal mining in the entire Godavari Valley, mined 721 million tons by 2005.

The state's second power station was built in Singareni. The railway connection existed through a branch line to Dornakal Junction . The state railway received a 30% discount on the price of coal, in return granted an equal discount on the freight rate. Workers' settlements were built and clean drinking water was provided, which pushed back ancylostomiasis, which was very common until 1925 . A company-owned hospital under a European doctor had 70 beds and could accommodate 110 patients in emergencies. Before the First World War, the rate of fatal accidents per 1,000 employees was around half that of Europe; this value is significantly worse when one relates the number of fatal accidents to the output per capita.

garnet

The mining of grenades in the Warangal district was carried out by licensed small business owners who sold their finds to the company. Production averaged 13,680 lbs . In 1910–1914  , rose to 232,612 lbs. In 1915–1919, then fell to 62,517 lbs. In 1920–1924, the average for the next 5 years was only 28,443 lbs. The company gave back its concession in 1935 because mining had become unprofitable. The larger burgundy stones were used to make jewelry, while the less beautiful pieces were used to make sandpaper.

Other minerals

Iron ore was also found in small quantities near Singareni. Gold -bearing quartz was mined on other minerals in the taluks Manvi and Deodrug, but these deposits were exhausted by the First World War, the operation of Hutti's Gold Mines Ltd. Discontinued in 1920. Limestone was mined near Yegdīr. For these mining products, 1/15 of the proceeds had to be paid as a concession fee.

staff

The first directors were funders William Clarence Watson and John Stewart (July 29, 1887). The first general manager on site was Theo WH Hughes, who came from the Geological Survey of India and also received free shares. Whites, often with experience in South African or Australian mining, were recruited as mine managers. The directors of the Singareni Collieries (from 1921) included the members of the council Akbar Hydari and Salar Jung III. and L. C. Croslegh, W. W. Paul, with Sir Gordon Fraser as Chairman. The general manager was R. L. Andrews.

The town of Yellandlapād, located near the Singareni mine, had 12,377 inhabitants in 1901. The 6,360 workers, divided into piecework columns, achieved monthly wages of 3 to 4 Rs for days, 7-10 Rs in the mine in 1909. Work was carried out in three shifts from the start. Numerous women also worked underground. The mining output per capita of the miners, mostly recruited from landless peasants, averaged only a quarter of that achieved in the rest of the Empire. The number of employees rose to 8,315 by 1914, of which 6406 worked underground. In 1928, around 22,000 people lived around the mine, around half of whom were employed there. Cutting machines and the use of explosives in mining did not become common in India until the late 1930s.

literature

  • Hyderabad (Deccan) Company; A Short Description of the Singareni Collieries . s. l. 1928
  • John Law: Modern Hyderabad (Deccan) . Calcutta 1914, Ch. XIII: The Singareni Collieries ( full text )
  • Moulyi Syed Mahdi (Revenue and Financial Secretary): Hyderabad Papers Vol IX: English Newspaper Comments on the Hyderabad (Deccan) Mining Company… . London 1889 ( full text )
  • Henner Papendieck: British Managing Agencies in Indian Coal Mining 1893–1918 . Berlin 1980, 485 p. (Freie Univ., Diss., 1975)
  • Tara Sethia: British Imperial Interests and the Indian Princely States . Los Angeles 1986 (PhD thesis, University of California)

Official writings

  • House of Commons: The Return of Correspondence between the Government of India and the Secretary of State relating to the Concession of Mining Rights in the Deccan . 16th September 1887 ("Blue Book," incomplete)
  • Memorandum on the Budget Estimate of the Railway for Fasli, 1297 (Hyderabad Yellow Book); 86 pp.
  • The Nizam's Government, Hyderabad Deccan Company: Lease of the Singareni Coal Field . Madras 1895; ("Confidential: Working Copy of Lease for Use of the Government Only" full text )
  • Select Committee on East India (Hyderabad Deccan Mining Company): Report…. London 1888; ("First…, May 17th" and "Second Report, August 8th" in the National Archives (Oriental and India Office Collections): IOR / R / 2/88/309, 1888)

Web links

Singareni Collieries History (Engl.)

References and comments

  1. ↑ Singareni Collieries Company in the English language Wikipedia
  2. ↑ * 1853, † May 1896. Sirdar Diler Jung ul-Mulk, CSI . Dictionary of Indian Biography; 1906, p. 2
  3. ↑ Something similar happened with a concession for rubies in Burma the year before. See: Robert Vicat Turrell: Conquest and Concession: The Case of the Burma Ruby Mines; Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 141-163 (1988)
  4. ↑ Discussed in the House of Commons: 5th, officially published: 9th August 1888
  5. ↑ Files in the National Archives: P 786/1916 Case of the Nizam's Government and the Hyderabad (Deccan) Mining Company [no ref.] August 16, 1887 - March 3, 1916
  6. ↑ a b Lease of the Singareni Coal Field . Madras 1895; Sections 15, 16, 19, 20, 2nd Schedule
  7. ^ A b c Imperial Gazetteer of India , Provincial Series, Hyderabad State; 1909
  8. ↑ a b Modern Hyderabad (1914), p. 123
  9. ^ A b Imperial Gazetteer of India, The Empire of India, Vol. III: Economic; Oxford 1908 ( full text )
  10. ↑ a b c d Hyderabad (Deccan) Company; A Short Description of the Singareni Collieries . 1928
  11. ↑ INSERT LINK (April 11, 2005; zggr. August 22, 2010)
  12. ^ V. Ramakrishna Reddy: Economic history of Hyderabad State: Warangal Suba, 1911-1950 . P. 510f.
  13. ↑ Manvi Town: 15 ° 59 'N, 77 ° 3' E; 1901: population 6253. Deodrug Town: 16 ° 25 'N, 76 ° 56' E; 1901: 6773 pop. Imp. Gazetteer (1909) p. 280f
  14. ↑ 16 ° 46 'N, 77 ° 9' E
  15. ↑ 17 ° 3 'N, 80 ° 16' E