How Indore’s famous stuffed leather toys are made

 

A hundred horses, each one with its forelegs in the air, are sunning on the terrace of Anil’s house. They are well-muscled steeds, and Anil’s year-old son totters towards them gleefully, but he is picked up halfway to them and the danger passes.

The sun is shining brightly after three wet winter days and all hands are busy making up for lost time. Pulp casts of elephants and camels are hanging from the tin shed. A boy is twisting wire into frames for making tigers, another is pressing a mould with paper pulp inside, a woman is pasting leather on to the dried and touched-up casts, and I am witnessing the birth of Indore’s lifelike soft toys.

When the toys are finished, they will be packed and shipped to the metros, and even to Australia and the US. Although a traditional craft, they are not much in demand within Indore city, and are mostly sold at a few shops around the old palace, Rajwada. However, Mhow, just 23km away on NH-3, is a big market with its cosmopolitan mix of servicemen and their families from all over the country.

Toy making is an old craft in Indore, but it changed in one important way a few decades ago. While traditionally the stuffed toys were covered with velvet, the city’s craftsmen now use sheep or goat leather as it imparts a lifelike quality to the animal figures. “The muscle tone shines through leather,” says Anil. It is skin, after all, but why not use the more common buffalo hide?

Anil says three qualities make sheep and goat skins ideal for this work: “They are thinner than other hides, and take the shape of the cast that they are stuck upon.” Secondly, he says, “They absorb colour very nicely, which is essential to make the animals look lifelike.” Finally, though they are expensive, their supply is abundant.

Leather is the only raw material that comes from outside Indore. While it is supplied from Hyderabad, the paper pulp comes from Malwa Mills nearby. In fact, the area around this mill has most of Indore’s 20-odd soft toy factories. The remainder operate from Scheme Number 78, Nehru Nagar and Marimata Crossing. As for the little things like eyes and hooves of animals, these are available in the old markets around Rajwada.

With the raw material in place, how are all those beautiful animal figures crafted? The process seems simple enough, with not a single machine being used. But it requires a high degree of skill, which the craftsmen acquire with years of practice. Be it a horse, tiger, camel, elephant or any other animal, they all start out as a wire frame twisted deftly inside a minute. The same hands then bind straw over this frame to create a rough form upon which paper pulp is moulded.

The first workman completes his job within five minutes, and then another presses paper pulp onto this ‘skeleton’ with a mould. Since the pulp is wet and tender, the figure is left out in the open to dry, for a day. The next day, before the pulp hardens completely, an artist touches up the cast animal by defining its muscles and checks for any serious flaws that might result in rejection later on. All this takes just 15 minutes, and after some more drying the piece is ready to get its skin.


The glue used to stick the skin on to the cast is also special. It is made from tamarind seeds, by first roasting, then powdering them, and finally boiling the powder. Sticking the skin onto the cast requires a lot of skill as several small pieces of leather are stuck and yet the final skin has to appear seamless. The pasting is finished within 20 minutes, and then the pieces are set out to dry in the sun again, for a day

The basic toy is now ready, but to be saleable it needs vital finishing touches, like painting and embellishment. This job is done not in the factories but in the homes of the workmen. Each toy takes a few minutes to finish, but the pieces are returned only after a day, when they are a sight to behold. Especially the horses, which return not only richly painted but also equipped with tiny saddles and reins.

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How India tried to stop baby boom with calendars, peas

Instead of promoting contraceptives, newly independent India toyed with impractical family planning ideas for several years

Photo source 

Wednesday brought the news that India’s total fertility rate has slipped to 2. “Population explosion” is officially over. Part of the credit for this goes to the long-running family planning programme, but few know that it made a floundering start in the 1950s.

In 1951, we were a nation of 361 million people – a billion less than now, but the government was already concerned about population growth. “The increase of population in India constitutes a big national problem,” health minister Rajkumari Amrit Kaur told Parliament on December 20, 1956.

The government was keen to do something about it, but didn’t want to begin “any countrywide scheme of control on a matter like this without a very careful study of all factors involved,” Kaur had said on July 29, 1952. Yet, all it had done until then was set up three centres for pilot studies on a birth control measure that both scientists and planners did not find feasible.

Rhythm’s gonna get you

The government’s pet birth control measure was called the ‘rhythm method’. Instead of contraceptives it required knowledge of a woman’s menstrual cycle. Couples had to take a course in which they were told to have intercourse on days when ovulation was least likely.

Even in 1952 experts spoke against the rhythm method. By Kaur’s own admission: “Some of the women’s organisations have given their opinion. They are in favour of the use of mechanical contraceptives.”

The birth-control pill was not available then but condoms and foam tablets were. Did the government try to popularise these? Asked whether the government intended to subsidise contraceptives for the poor, Kaur said on September 13, 1954: “No, government is not supplying contraceptives to anybody.”

Nor did the government give grants to institutions and experts for research in family planning. Its entire focus was on the complicated rhythm method for which only three training centres  –  two in New Delhi and one in Ramanagaram, Mysore  – had been set up.

The Ramanagaram centre, for example, covered 14 villages with altogether 941 married women under the age of 40. Of them, only 712 enrolled in the course with their husbands. From the time the programme started in September-October 1952, to the end of June 1953, “only 385 menstruating women had been actively followed for various lengths of time.”

(A ‘Rythmeter’ chart used for fertility planning in the US, in the 1940s. Photo source)

The rhythm method was impractical any way you looked at it. “Tentative advice on the rhythm method is given after the examination of three menstrual cycles. Final rhythm is worked out on the basis of six menstrual cycles,” the government said. To know their safe dates, couples had to use aids like beads and calendar cards, and many were not happy using them. Women also did not like the invasion of their privacy for drawing up rhythm charts.

No regard for facts

Ignoring the difficulties, the government continued promoting the rhythm method. During a discussion on September 13, 1954, MP Violet Alva cited an expert’s advice that it “was not acceptable to the countryside and that some other method had to be thought of...”

The health minister replied: “Many people say many things. The government should consider them all and see what is feasible for the country.”

Dr Seeta Parmanand, another MP, asked, “What is the percentage of people, both doctors and social workers, who are in favour of the rhythm method?”

The minister said, “Government has no information as to what proportion favours which method.” Nor did the government have data about the effectiveness of the rhythm method.

From dates to peas

Instead of adopting straightforward birth control measures, the government then wasted more time and money on ideas like developing oral contraceptives from field peas because a Mumbai-based scientist had shown that pea extract caused abortions in animals when taken in very high doses.

It also released a movie titled ‘Planned Parenthood’ in English and six other languages, and started a free magazine, ‘Family Planning News,’ with a circulation of 10,000 copies, but neither campaign made an impact.

A different tune

For six years, the government stubbornly shrugged off criticism of the rhythm method, and then gave it a quiet burial. On September 16, 1958, when Dr Parmanand asked, “Whether the experiment on rhythmic method of family planning has been stopped,” the new health minister, D P Karmarkar, replied, “Experiments exclusively on rhythmic method have been stopped.”

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How India taught herself to make good pens and ink

In the summer of 1961, Government of India was waiting for an expert from the United States. Not an agricultural scientist or a meteorologist but someone with knowledge of the fountain pen industry. India had completely stopped importing fountain pens in 1958, and by 1960 domestic production of pens had risen to 12 million pieces in the organised sector and 10 million in cottage industries. We made enough pens for our needs  ( although nibs were 100% imported)  but not always to an acceptable quality. So in 1961, Government of India turned to the US for a quality control expert.

It seems strange now that a country that frequently sends the world’s satellites into space couldn’t make good pens just half a century ago, but this is a part of India’s growing-up story.

Forget pens, we even needed help to make ink in the early years after Independence. By 1957 –  10 years after Independence  –  the import of ink had been banned for the same reason that foreign cars weren’t allowed in India. We wanted to be self-dependent in everything and save precious foreign exchange.




In 1957, India’s installed capacity for ink was 3.5 million boxes containing a dozen 2-ounce bottles each, while the demand was for only 0.9 million boxes. Still, foreign brands outnumbered the domestic ink makers. Pilot, Waterman, Quink, Stephens’ and Swan were the five foreign ink brands made and sold in India at the time. Of these, Pilot and Quink even had equity participation while the other three were made under technical collaboration. The four important homegrown brands were Camel, Sulekha, Harihar and Nuluk.

All of the ink factories in India imported some of their raw material like methylene blue, and the foreign collaborations also brought in their respective secret sauces.

Coming back to fountain pens, India used to import them from the US, UK, Australia, West Germany, France, Japan, etc, but to encourage domestic manufacturing, the government had decided that pens that cost less than Rs 25 apiece would not be imported. This spurred the growth of factories in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata and the town of Rajahmundry in Andhra Pradesh. By the mid-1950s there were 12 Indian manufacturers, of whom Rajahmundry-based Ratnam & Sons were the oldest and most famous.

But the quality of most early Indian manufacturers was iffy, so in 1956 the government approved two foreign collaborations — with Pilot and Waterman, respectively. The government hoped that the joint venture factories would make world-class pens for as little as Rs 10 apiece, but in a few years it felt the need to improve quality across the industry and called in an American technical expert.



The manufacture of ballpoint pens started even later, although the foreign maker of ‘Biro’ pens had offered to set up a factory as early as 1953. The government had rejected that offer because the company wanted 49% stake in the joint venture and a high percentage of royalty.

The first approval to make ballpoint pen ink in India was granted in 1962 for a joint venture between Dhirajlal Mohanlal Joshi, a businessman based in Rajkot, Gujarat, and M/s Formulabs Inc of Escondido, California. Asked whether the ink couldn’t have been made in India without a foreign collaboration, the government frankly admitted it was not possible.

Today, banks recommend that you sign cheques with a ballpoint to prevent fraud, but back in the 1960s ballpoint pens were not allowed for many uses in India. You could fill out a money order with a ballpoint but the payee had to sign with a fountain pen. Bills, government cheques and endorsements made on government cheques all had to be signed with fountain pens.

The rules have been completely rewritten in the years since.

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I first published this article on my Medium blog, under the handle @pastmaster77, on October 16, 2016. Two days later, I posted it on my Times of India blog. Both blogs don't exist now but here's proof the article is mine: https://web.archive.org/web/20161018041712/http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/paperweight/how-india-scripted-its-pen-and-ink-story/

From AIR to Doordarshan, how India got hooked on TV

For about a decade before cable TV caught on in the 1990s, city roofs had turned into a forest of aluminium fronds. Each house in every building had its own ‘tree’ on the roof. You needed them to receive Doordarshan (DD) signals, although if you lived close enough to a TV station an aluminium clothes hanger worked fine.

Those old antennas were veritable lightning rods. You were supposed to unplug the telly in a storm. They were also directional. A strong wind or even the burden of perched pigeons could disorient them, leaving you staring at an eruption of white and grey dots – colours, if you had a colour TV. The accompanying noise was unbearable. You ran upstairs, leaving someone in the room as a guide.

“Now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“No.”
“Now?”
“A little more… That’s it. Stop, stop, stop.”

The whole building knew you had set your antenna right. You could go back to your Sunday evening movie, or Wimbledon final, or Chitrahar, or Rajani, or whatever else you had been watching. But there was nothing you could do if a big leader died. Days of national mourning followed during which DD shut shop and went home, or opened it only to drown you in sorrow with gloomy shastriya sangeet.

Not that DD was exciting otherwise. Children nodded off in the middle of the evening news. Grown-ups stayed up in the hope of catching an episode of Buniyaad, or Jeremy Brett in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or Satyajit Ray Presents, or Lucy, or whatever came afterwards. It was not unusual for DD to repeat episodes, but viewers watched them anyway out of habit.

Children had only Sunday mornings to look forward to (Johnny Soko and his Flying Robot was a rare evening show). Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, He Man, Street Hawk, Appu aur Pappu, Knight Rider and a few others walked the 80s’ generation to maturity. But Ramayan, Mahabharat, Chanakya, Bharat Ek Khoj and other shows had started encroaching on their time. The children twitched impatiently as Ramayan’s arrows took longer than intercontinental missiles to collide. When cable came, they happily jumped ship to sing, “I want my MTV.”

Radio with images

Still, DD in the early-90s was a much-improved avatar of its original. From the beginning, television in India had been intended to educate, not entertain. It started when All India Radio (AIR) approached the United States Information Service (USIS) in 1958 for help to start television services. USIS loaned AIR some cameras and other equipment, and Unesco gave 20 TV sets and portable generators to set up tele-clubs in Delhi.

And so, with a puny, 500-watt Philips transmitter, Delhi got India’s first TV service on September 15, 1959. For some years, there were just two shows of one hour each over the week. And they were only available in a radius of 24km. Parts of Ghaziabad and Gurgaon districts had no signals till July 1971, when a more powerful transmitter increased the range to 60km.

Nobody missed the signals, though. Even in 1973, Delhi had only 75,000 TV sets. Entire India bought 97,000 sets in 1975. The government kept a count because, back then, you needed a licence to own a TV or even a radio, for that matter. The annual licence fee was Rs 30. So, you had to be rich to have your private telly. In 1974, a 19-inch B/W TV cost about Rs 2,100 in India, while in the US it was worth $150, or Rs 1,200 at the prevailing exchange rate of roughly Rs 8 to a dollar.

While Delhi experimented with television as an educational tool through the 1960s, other metros didn’t get their stations until the early 1970s. Mumbai station was commissioned on October 2, 1972.

The main Delhi experiment in those years was called ‘Delhi School Television Project’. It started in 1960, and by 1964-65, 62% of the city’s 367 higher secondary schools had a TV set to show students 20-minute lessons.

‘Agricultural Television Pilot Project’ was the next big thing. On January 26, 1967, it started Krishi Darshan, the longest running show on Indian TV. But the audience for it shrank rapidly. A survey found the main reason farmers didn’t watch it was because they came home tired after working in the field and weren’t in a mood for ‘education’ about crops. The show had no entertainment component.

When AIR started daily telecasts from August 1, 1965, it wedged in some entertainment in its schedule. West Germany had helped Delhi build a modern studio. Once a month, it showed a feature film edited to fit a 90-minute slot. Then came Chitrahar, a Bollywood music show, but the guiding principle for both the movie and the songs was “suitability for viewing in a family setting.” Content for TV had to be “free from sex, nudity, violence and crime.” Each Chitrahar show was previewed by AIR’s senior programme officer and an assistant station director.

Despite the ‘sanskari’ philosophy, a 1972 survey showed Chitrahar was the favourite show in Delhi, closely followed by the Hindi news and the Hindi feature film. Krishi Darshan came last.

Doordarshan is born

Through the 1960s, the government neglected TV. Making shows was difficult because import controls kept 16mm cameras, film and processing labs scarce. A committee pointed out that studios were forced to erase old interviews and other programmes from tapes to reuse them. As a result, the BBC had more footage of Indian leaders than AIR.

It was the government’s policy then to not allow commercials on TV. An AIR director general said, “If TV is able to sell advertising time, then we will have to say goodbye to the present philosophy of TV.” But the 70s brought the realisation that Indian TV needed a new direction. More entertainment, if anything. More money too. “The newscaster should become secondary to visuals,” was a wise but ignored view of that time.

Between 1969 and 1973, the daily telecast duration had doubled from 2 hours to 4 hours, but the big change happened on April 1, 1976 when Indian radio and television were separated. The TV arm became Doordarshan (a literal translation of ‘television’) that day, with a revolving logo that looked like the rounded aperture blades of a camera lens. It was also the day Indian TV went commercial. All those memorable ads – Liril, Bajaj, Nirma, Rasna, Garden Vareli, Luna, to name a few – wouldn’t have become part of our collective memory otherwise. Of course, we could still have exchanged notes about Ek Chidiya, Anek Chidiya, and Mile Sur Mera Tumhara today.

Gradually, Indian TV became less preachy and more friendly with a little foreign help. Star Trek found an Indian following. The usually dry weekday evenings were sometimes brightened by English detectives in Target, and Shoestring. There was also the German detective show Derrick, and our own Byomkesh Bakshi. Didi’s Comedy Show, also from Germany, raised many laughs. Oshin from Japan was a lesson in grace.

There was no English pop on DD, but once a year you got to watch the Grammy highlights. Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Alannah Myles, REM – the singers who stared at you from cassette covers came alive for an hour. And sanskari DD could do nothing when Robert Palmer left parents red-faced before kids with Simply Irresistible.

In 1982, DD had switched to colour telecasts in preparation for the Asian Games, and in April 1984 the country saw its only cosmonaut, Rakesh Sharma, tell PM Indira Gandhi India looked ‘Sare Jahan Se Achha’ from space.

While DD was scoring popularity points, it needed a blockbuster, which arrived in July 1984 in the form of Hum Log. A family drama with social issues at its core and veteran actor Ashok Kumar’s thoughtful epilogues after each episode, it prodded thousands of families to buy a TV. There was an explosion of TV brands – Crown, Weston, Uptron, Nelco, Texla, Salora...down to Oscar, Onida and Binatone.

Hum Log became so popular, by one account DD received 2 lakh letters from viewers over its 18-month run, and the cast got an equal number. Other shows replicated Hum Log’s success in the decade ahead, and the Indian viewer resigned herself to a life with DD, accepting it would be mostly dull but also interesting in parts. Then cable arrived and cleared the forest of antennas.

*

Why India was a 3-car country for 30 years

Maruti 800 was to India what Model T had been to America in the early 1900s, and the Fiat 500 to Europe in the post-War years. It was at the right place at the right time and the right price.

Before the 800 arrived, for 30 years India had only three cars: Hindustan Ambassador, Premier Padmini and Standard Herald. Was it love? What explains the Indian people’s surprising constancy to these cars?

Government policy. Those cars were not the best fit for India, not in the 1980s, nor in 1950s. Fans vouch for the sturdiness of their frames and the forgiving nature of their engines, but any other car from the 1950s would have done just as well.

Point is, why did India start with these three mid-size cars instead of something smaller like the 500 or the Mini that would have been cheaper and got Indian car manufacturing to shift into high gear 30 years early?

Case for ‘Baby’ Cars

The government was not blind to the need for smaller and cheaper cars. Many members of Parliament had pointed out that the existing cars, priced around Rs 10,000 each in 1957, were too expensive for the middle class, and new models in the Rs 5,000–6,000 range were needed.

This is what then industries minister Manubhai Shah had to say about ‘baby’ cars on November 20, 1957: “That can be a real average middle-class family car, particularly for urban use…Undoubtedly the lighter cars are wanted in the interest of the consumer public, particularly the middle-class families in the urban areas.”

Policy Block

But the smaller people-movers did not materialise until Suzuki set up shop in India 30 years later. For a brief period, Hindustan Motors sold a smaller car called Baby Hindustan  — “already licensed as far as the manufacturing programme is concerned, but we have not encouraged its large-scale manufacture.”

Why didn’t the government encourage smaller cars? The answer lies in independent India’s well-intentioned but counterproductive early manufacturing policies.

Back in 1953, an advisory body called Tariff Commission recommended that “the manufacture of automobiles should be restricted to a few firms.” The motive was to transform India into a manufacturing country. If only a few car models were allowed, each one of them would sell in larger numbers, bringing economies of scale to encourage local manufacturing.

In fact, before Independence in 1947 and for the first few years afterwards, about three dozen models of cars and altogether 4-5 dozen models of automobiles were sold in India.

The government responded to the 1953 recommendations by allowing only six firms to manufacture selected types of vehicles, including cars, trucks and jeeps. How were these six firms picked? The government called for manufacturing programmes from industrialists, and from those who applied, it approved six.

Before full manufacturing could begin, the government imposed restrictions on the assemblers to import only three types of cars and trucks. Three years later, in 1956, the Commission came back with even stronger advice:

“We should give priority to the manufacture of commercial vehicles rather than passenger cars.”

“It would be definitely undesirable to introduce any more passenger cars for manufacture in the country.”

The Economic Weekly of March 2, 1957 criticised this approach because no thought was given to the type of car India needed most: “The Tariff Commission has had to accept the situation as it was and give its approval to the manufacture of cars for which sponsors were already available. A selection on the basis of first-come, first-served, without looking into the capacity of these cars to suit Indian conditions.”

Dogmatic Attitude

The government went along with the Commission’s advice.

“The government has decided that as far as passenger cars are concerned, the manufacturing units should concentrate on Hindustan Landmaster (later Hindustan Ambassador), Fiat 1100 and Standard Vanguard. Also Standard 10, which is of a lighter variety than the above three models, is being manufactured in sizeable numbers. Until and unless these models go into production in sufficient numbers and also with the requisite percentage of indigenous components to a satisfactory limit, it is the policy of the government not to permit any further models in the passenger cars,” Manubhai Shah said while moving the Indian Tariff (Amendment) Bill, 1957.

Mark the word ‘satisfactory’. Whose satisfaction?

“…in the opinion of the government to produce to the entire satisfaction of the government,” said Shah.

He dismissed the question of promoting compact cars: “We have not encouraged its (Baby Hindustan’s) large-scale manufacture and we would not encourage its large-scale manufacture unless and until the Hindustan Ambassador comes out in a satisfactory way in all respects.”

The government clung to that policy. “We would rather concentrate on the existing models.” Years passed, governments changed but for three decades, India continued to focus on those three initial car models.

***

How India's dream to make petrol from coal died

For decades, different committees proposed this path to energy self-sufficiency, but governments disagreed

When petrol crossed the Rs 100 mark on February 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi blamed previous governments for India’s dependence on imported oil. He might have a point. Around the time India became independent, the technology to turn coal into liquid fuel was in the news. Government of India showed interest in it. Foreign companies made pitches. Indian scientists made a plan. Then, nothing.

This happened several times over the decades, and it’s only in recent years that talk of turning coal into petrol has died out. This is a story of shortsightedness and official lethargy bound in red tape.

Hitler’s oil

Coal fed the steam age, but the 20th century belonged to internal combustion engines that ran on petrol and diesel. Ironically, Germany, whose inventors made the first petrol and diesel engines, had no oil of its own. It had plenty of coal, though.

In 1935, German engineers showed that converting coal into petrol and diesel was commercially “feasible”. Although costlier than imported fuel, it could save the country in a crisis. By the time WW-II started in 1939, Germany had built nine plants based on the Fischer-Tropsch conversion process with a total annual capacity of 740,000 metric tonnes of synthetic oil. In 1944, German synthetic oil capacity peaked at 4 million tonnes per annum. It was this capacity to make oil that kept Hitler’s tanks, trucks and planes moving even after the Allies had cut off his other oil supplies.

Indian interest

The war ended in 1945 with Hitler’s defeat but the interest in synthetic oil did not die. The December 31, 1947 edition of The New York Times reported that a big American chemical company called Koppers planned to “devote a considerable amount of research during 1948 to development of processes for making synthetic liquid fuels and other chemicals from coal.”

In time, Koppers and other companies pitched the technology to India. In July 1952, science minister KD Malaviya confirmed in the Lok Sabha that the director general of industries had made plans for a synthetic oil plant as early as 1950 and negotiated with a foreign firm to set it up.

The government’s own Fuel Research Institute in Dhanbad had set up an experimental Fischer-Tropsch unit “producing about one gallon of liquid product per day” and a “small high pressure hydrogenation plant for production of aviation spirit.” But Malaviya said the plan had been abandoned because of “cost.”

Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru elaborated on the cost aspect in December 1953: “This particular matter of synthetic petrol has been examined very thoroughly. In fact, it was not merely examined, but schemes were worked out, but due to various reasons, one of them being the heavy cost of this project – it is a very, very expensive project – it could not be undertaken. I cannot say that it has been given up, but for the present it is not being undertaken.”

Yet, two years later, in March 1955, Malaviya said Koppers had submitted a report to the government “two years ago”, indicating interest in synthetic oil had revived soon after his 1952 reply. He said, “steps are being taken to obtain project reports” from reputed international firms for setting up a synthetic oil plant. The government was looking to use lignite from southern mines for making oil.

South Africa

While India dillied and dallied on synthetic oil, South Africa went right ahead and turned it into a major industry in 1955. A 1980 report by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says Sasol (South African Coal, Oil and Gas Corporation) had been running the “world’s only oil-from-coal plant... since 1955,” and after expansion it would produce 112,000 barrels of oil per day – “about half of South Africa’s needs.”

While India rejected synthetic oil in the 1950s on grounds of cost, the EPA report says Sasol’s production cost in 1979 averaged $17 per barrel, well below the $20 that imported oil cost at the time. And, South Africans paid “about $0.63/litre of gasoline at the pump.” The low price was thanks to cheap labour in South Africa. The EPA estimated that synthetic oil in the US would cost at least $27 per barrel, and the price could go up to $45. But India had no dearth of cheap labour then, so perhaps our doubts about viability were misplaced.

Sasol is still very much in the business of synthetic oil, and a 2017 Financial Times report says “its Secunda plant east of Johannesburg is the world’s largest coal-to-liquids facility.”

More experiments

But the question of synthetic oil was still alive in India. Many MPs pushed for it on grounds of energy security. The government-appointed Ghosh committee submitted its report on synthetic oil in February 1956. It recommended starting with a Rs 20 crore plant in the Jambad Kajora area of West Bengal’s Raniganj coalfield that would yield 120,000-125,000 tonnes of motor fuel from 1.2 million tonnes of non-coking coal. The report was rejected because “natural oil was cheaper and foreign exchange was scarce.”

Yet, experiments continued. In September 1960, science minister Humayun Kabir told Lok Sabha about IIT Kharagpur’s pilot project to make synthetic fuel from coal. Over 20 days, the small unit with a designed capacity of 100 gallons per day made 64 gallons per day. The Central Fuel Research Institute (CFRI) in Hyderabad was also engaged in similar research, Kabir said.

Nine years went by, and in December 1969 education minister VKRV Rao said experiments conducted at CFRI “showed encouraging results for conversion of Neyveli lignite to oil by direct hydrogenation or by Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Further work is in progress.”

Six years on, rattled by the steep rise in oil prices after the 1973 Arab-Israel war, another committee was studying the subject. Deputy energy minister Siddheshwar Prasad told Lok Sabha in March 1975: “The matter of conversion of coal into synthetic oil is under consideration of the ‘Expert Group on Synthetic Oil’ recently constituted by the central government.”

The committee gave its report in 1977, recommending a synthetic oil plant with a capacity of 1 million tonnes per annum. The plant was expected to cost Rs 1,140 crore, so the government rejected it citing low international prices. The government’s argument: synthetic oil would cost Rs 809 per tonne without duties, and Rs 997 with duties and taxes, but imported crude cost only Rs 909 per tonne (1977 price). Couldn’t the government have exempted synthetic fuel from taxes, to start the industry?

US attempt

Koppers and synthetic fuel were back in the news in 1980. The US wanted to insulate its oil supply from Arab-Israel conflict and it decided to set up an independent agency called ‘Synthetic Fuels Corporation’ for this. Fletcher L Byrom, chairman of Koppers at the time, was a frontrunner to head the corporation. The NYT on July 23, 1980 reported that the SFC would “dwarf the programs that took America to the moon and built the interstate highway system.”

The SFC’s task was to spur the production of oil from coal, shale and tar sands, so that within two years, 10% of the US oil consumption would come from these sources. Over the next few years, it spent almost a billion dollars on four synthetic fuel projects, none of which survive today. The SFC itself was wound up in 1986 because President Reagan chose to leave the matter of oil supply to market forces.

More committees

Meanwhile, India appointed another committee – the Sidhu Committee – to examine the question of synthetic oil. In February 1986, energy minister Vasant Sathe told Lok Sabha that the cost of setting up a 1 million tonne synthetic oil plant had risen to Rs 2,800 crore. “Resource constraints and adverse economics” prevailed again – no synthetic oil plant was set up.

After that, as India liberalised, synthetic oil and self-reliance ceased to matter. The next mention of synthetic oil in Lok Sabha occured 20 years ago in February 2001. And it was a passing mention: “the issue of production of synthetic oil from coal can be transferred to one or other of the fuel research agencies.”

In October 2008, Rajya Sabha member B K Hariprasad asked “whether private players have evinced interest in setting up such coal-to-liquid projects”. The government replied, “28 applications were received from 22 applicants,” who had proposed to get know-how from foreign firms.

At last, India seemed to be on the verge of unlocking its synthetic oil potential, but five years passed with no action on the ground, and in March 2013 BJP member Piyush Goyal asked, “whether the central government has any proposal to extract oil from coal”. The government replied coal liquefaction was “one of the specified end uses for the purpose of allotment of captive coal/lignite blocks to the entrepreneurs.”

Jindal Steel and Power was one of the companies that had proposed to build a synthetic oil plant in India. But when the Supreme Court cancelled the allocation of 214 coalfields to private players in September 2014, Jindal aborted its $10-billion, 80,000 barrels-per-day coal-to-diesel project in Odisha.

Meanwhile, 85 years after Germany and 65 years after South Africa, India’s science establishment still talks about synthetic oil as though it is a technology of the future. A 2017 blog post on the mygov.in website says: “Very recently, CSIR-CIMFR has successfully installed and commissioned an integrated coal-to-liquid pilot plant… (which) produces 5 litres per day liquid hydrocarbon.”

IIT Kharagpur was making 64 gallons per day in 1960!

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How India scuttled its scooter bazaar in the 1970s

In 1972, the wait for a scooter — Vespa or Lambretta — stretched to seven years by the government’s own admission. The middle class was growing. A study group of the government’s Planning Commission estimated that 210,000 scooters would be needed in 1973–74. The think tank National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) said annual demand would increase to 243,000 scooters within eight years, by 1979–80.

How many scooters was India manufacturing in 1972? These are the government’s own production/sales figures for 1969–72:

The queues were clearly going to get longer. The two big licensees — Automobile Products of India (API) that made Lambretta scooters, and Bajaj that made Vespa scooters — had applied for permission to increase production capacity to 100,000 units each per annum, but instead of saying ‘yes’, the government started reviewing their applications under Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Act.

See the irony of it? Both firms were born of and ran with government licences. The government decided how many scooters either one could make in a year; it also set their prices. Yet, when time came to increase production, it sat down to consider whether it was creating monstrous monopolies.

That was not the only thing the government did. It sent a team to Milan to buy the “entire plant along with all auxiliaries as well as the technical know-how, including worldwide trademark and export rights” of M/s Innocenti, owners of the Lambretta brand. That might have been a good thing in the early 1960s, but by 1972 Innocenti had already lost to Vespa. They had thrown in the towel. They were closing down their scooter business.

Government of India closed the deal for $1.85 million (Rs 1.5 crore in those days at an exchange rate of about Rs 8 to a US dollar) and proudly announced it was going to start making 100,000 scooters per annum on its own. In the new company, government was to have 51% stake, M/s Innocenti 20%, and API, other institutions and the public the remaining 29%.

Why were Innocenti given a stake? Government’s virtuous reply was that it would keep $400,000 of the sale price within the country and also ensure the Italian company’s technological knowhow forever. Never mind that it was outdated technology that people across the world didn’t want anymore.

Why were API given a share? Because they had proposed to buy out Innocenti’s Italian unit first, and also because their experience of making Lambretta scooters in India would be useful to the new company. So the government said.

A deal of this sort was bound to raise questions. Members of Parliament asked why precious foreign exchange was being spent on machinery that Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT) could have made in India. Government replied it was an “as is where is” deal; they couldn’t choose bits and pieces of the factory.

Wasn’t the machinery old and much-used? Was it worth the price? Government said it had sent a team of experts — including the vice-chairman of API — to inspect the plant, and had also got an independent assessment done by London-based M/s Gibb Ewbank. Industries minister Moinul Haque Choudhury said, “The condition of the machinery was reasonably good and the value was more than the amount of $2 million asked”.

The first scooter from the new factory was not expected until two years later, but the government said that was a lot better than the “7–8 years” making a completely new scooter from the drawing board would require.

Did time prove the government right? The new company, Scooters India Limited, never ran to capacity even in those shortage years. Instead, it ran up huge losses before it stopped making two-wheelers. Like the rest of the world, Indians chose Bajaj’s Vespa technology. And the waiting period for a scooter grew to more than 10 years before the market caught up with demand.

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In the 1970s, government decided the profit margins of Indian industries

Imagine being asked to pay more for a car you bought a year ago. Early in 1972, people who had bought Premier Padmini (Fiat 1100 D) cars between July 1, 1970 and April 15, 1971, received letters to cough up Rs 1,800 each. It was a lot of money in those days when a new car cost Rs 22,000 (see graphic).
The buyers had signed undertakings to pay up if Supreme Court of India allowed Premier to increase prices. The company and its two competitors — Hindustan Motors and Standard Motor Products — had challenged Government of India, which fixed prices of everything from bread to cars in those days.
After losing the case, the government reluctantly notified new ex-factory prices for all three makes of cars on January 24, 1972:

If these ‘low’ prices surprise you, in January 1957 the same cars cost Rs 10,424, Rs 8,934 and Rs 8,702, respectively, at the factory gates. Today, you probably pay that much for a routine service and synthetic engine oil. That’s what inflation does to money.
This case shows what a bizarre economy we were only four decades ago when government even decided how much profit a business could earn. For car prices, the government allowed only 12% return on capital, but Supreme Court increased it to 16%. Either way, market forces had no place in the economy. The home ministry’s Enforcement Department raided car makers and arrested their officers on charges of price manipulation.
Swadeshi (indigenisation) was the only holy grail, shutting the door on new foreign technology. All three cars were almost completely localised, and continued unchanged decade after decade:

The government also had a tendency to get into businesses it had no business being in. When people complained about the deteriorating quality of car components, it set up a committee to suggest improvements and sent inspectors to factories. It in fact opposed the car makers’ demand for higher prices on the ground that they were slipping up on quality.

Politicians of every colour talked about nationalising the car industry, some said the three companies should be merged to reduce costs and bring down prices. Singed by the Supreme Court order, the government sought the law department’s opinion on denying courts any say in matters of price fixation. They were scary times indeed for businesses.
And then, the government decided to turn car maker itself. There had been talk of a cheap car or a people’s car since the 1950s, and in the second half of 1970, the government announced its intention. Two years later, a Cabinet decision was still awaited.
Meanwhile, the way to lower car prices was quite evident to all: lower taxes and duties. The on-road prices of cars were almost 40% higher than the ex-factory price, yet the government refused to look into it. That attitude continues to this day, be it cars, petrol or your weekend pizza treat.
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