Economic uses and substitution of non-ferrous metals and alloys

MUST commonly used non-ferrous metals at the present
stage of industrialsation in India are aluminium,
copper, zinc, lead and tin. These metals and their
alloys form the basis of innumerable engineering appl-ications as well as domestic uses.Unfortunately, except aluminium and negligibly small quantity of copper, zinc and lead. India does not produce at present any of the other non-ferrous metals, Without going into the stati-stics of Fourth Five-Year Plan period demand and prod-uction figures for these metals which undoubtedly have been dealt in some other papers of this Symyosium, it is sufficient to point out that jointly these four non-ferrous metals cause an annul drainage of about rupees forty crores of' foreign exchange. Further, the anti-cipated production capacity of copper, zinc and lead in near future fall fat- short of anticipated demand. The situation regarding tin is still worse because uptil now no tin bearing ores have been found in India.