Stalwarts who paved the way for India's auto story

In the Licence Raj days, government controlled every aspect of decision-making for automakers including capacity, product specs, royalty payments and even price points. The result was quality suffered and consumers did not have much choice. A report by Brian de Souza.

- Brian de Souza

In the beginning, was the Licence Raj. When independent India adopted the Soviet-inspired model of socialism, it placed its bets on planning to allocate resources such as scarce foreign exchange. The government did not believe in being dependent on the outside world, and import substitution was encouraged. Businesses would have to make products with basically no reference point to global standards or developments. The government of the day was convinced that through central planning and control of resources, it would be able to lift millions of Indians out of dire poverty.

However, it needs to be said that India's first PM, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru clearly art ulated the need for the industry when he that factories were the temples of modern India. The automotive sector, perhaps, was not on his mind. One image of the self-reliance that dominated the early years was that of the Bhakra Nangal dam. Understandably so, as India was an agricultural economy with millions dependent on it for their livelihoods.

With India's decision to clamp down on imports in order to save foreign exchange, the foreign auto sector brands had little choice but to exit. Among those who left were a clutch of companies that included names like Ford, Skoda, Studebaker, and Buick, to mention a few. Some of these names are familiar to us today, but in the early years of independence, these companies brought their completely built-up (CBU) cars into India via the import route and came via a docks near you. They were not manufactured here, there was no supplier community, and to afford a car, one had to be really very wealthy to buy one, and sadly the banks or financial lenders did not offer schemes as we see today. One only has to see a black and white picture of Bombay's Marine drive in the 1950s and 1960s to see how sparse the country's vehicle population was.