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1961: STARTING ON A HIGH Writing on ET’s 30th anniversary, Sanjaya Baru, now editor of Business Standard (it is notable how almost every senior business journalist in India has passed through ET at some point), would note that 1961 marked one last peak of the post-Independence boom: “The year The Economic Times was born was an aboveerage and comfortable year for the Indian economy... India’s gross domestic product had plummeted in 1957-58 to a negative annual rate of growth. It recovered impressively in 1958 and the uptrend was sustained till 1961 when the cycle turned downwards again.” At launch, though, the indicators seemed good. The first two five-year plans were seen to he been largely successful. India had a much revered prime minister who seemed to he affairs in the country firmly under control. There were hints of financial problems—the Mundhra scandal that came to light in 1958, and the run on Palai Central Bank that had caused its closure in 1960 were hints of problems to come (the early editions of ET had reports on the continuing investigations into both), but by and large the aura of that first generation of independent India’s politicians was still intact.The global high regard for India seemed confirmed when the new US President, John F Kennedy, named JK Galbraith as his envoy to India—a muchrespected economist, ET noted with some gratification on March 17.
Live EventsBut amid these positive stories, there were also signs of impending problems. These can be seen, for example, in the ET Index of 51 leading companies that the paper launched on May 18. Many of these companies like Tata Steel and India Cement are still with us and still large, but many of these companies he vanished—names changed, bought over, merged, faded away and in one case, Union Carbide, came to a cataclysmic end. More than individual names, though, what is striking is the composition of the companies—still hey on the old British basic commodity industries like jute and tea, and also with over one-fifth in the textiles sector. It was an economic composition that promised problems in many ways. ET was reporting worriedly on British moves to join the European Commission; with more than half of India’s export earnings coming from tea and jute, and most of that to Britain, what would happen if EC trade barriers were raised against us? Sectors like pharmaceuticals and technology barely feature in the list, and there are only two finance companies. Geographically , too, Delhi hardly features as a location for company headquarters whereas Calcutta still looms large. Between these two points would come the industrial decline, the Great Mill strike, the use of the underworld by mill owners and so much more chaos in Bombay. The most telling sign of those times, though, is in a report from June 3 about a massive new aid package of $2.2 billion for India approved by the Aid India Club of nations, including Britain, Canada, France, Japan, the US, West Germany and other European countries. ET noted that this was the second-largest such international aid package since the Marshall Plan that had revived Europe after World War II and, a few days later, the paper’s editorial page commented disapprovingly on how the prime minister had as yet failed to issue a statement acknowledging this.
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With any newspaper, one visual sign of the times is in the ads that are carried, running reminders of the products, styles, fashions and sectors considered important at that time. ET’s first front-page ad was for Bank of India, and other bank ads included ones from First National City Bank of New York (today better known as Citibank), and National Bank of Lahore, based in Delhi, a small reminder of the odds and ends of Partition that were still around. 1965: THE ‘60s SINK INBy the middle of the decade, the latent problems of 1961 had burst out. Nehru’s death the previous year had put Lal Bahadur Shastri in charge and he struggled to deal with the consequences of the Congress’ loss of political control over the country. The agitation over the impending imposition of Hindi was one, but ET also noted with dismay how the profligacy of state governments, increasingly run by non-Congress parties, or ones that disregarded central party precepts, had made nonsense of the finances of the Fourth Plan. The war with China, and the constant threat from Pakistan, had also pushed up defence spending, making prudent financial management even harder. Industrial agitation , often spurred by state-level politics, was also a common feature.
Live EventsBegging for aid was now a standard practice for the Indian government: in March 1965, the Aid India group approved a $1,250-million package. Another sign of the government’s loss of control to non-state players was the importance of the smuggling industry. This was so large and organised that ET almost had to report it like any other sector, noting on March 29, 1965, how smuggled gold was expected to rise in the next few months in response to the needs of the marriage season. One issue of direct importance to the paper was advertising and publishing. From 1961, ET had been fulminating about the problems of getting newsprint from tightly-controlled government sources, and now in 1965, this was joined by concerns about the government’s intentions towards advertising. Nehru (and Gandhi before him) had always rather disapproved of advertising, and many politicians had imbibed this. Now a proposal was being floated to levy a special tax on newspapers that had a more than 40% ad-to-edit ratio. Not surprisingly, ET was strongly critical of this, both directly on its editorial page, and through its ad columnist who went by the name of TwoPeas (over the years many senior advertising figures like Sylvester daCunha and K Kurian would take on this ad columnist role), and it was happy to report some limited success when the government set up a special committee to report on the problems facing advertising. 1966-77 : THE INDIRA YEARS
ET’s coverage of politics has always been thorough, but by definition it is not a paper with politics as its main focus. Perhaps this explains a certain uncertainty of editorial coverage in ET’s coverage of Mrs Gandhi’s first decade in power, from 1966-77 . These were years when, whether the paper liked it or not, politics took the front seat and the economy very clearly had to follow.
But then in June 1966 came the event that probably permanently marked ET’s attitude towards her: the overnight devaluation of the rupee. The shock this caused can be seen in how little warning there was of it—in the days preceding the decision, there was little to suggest it was coming. Then in the evening of June 5, reporters were summoned in New Delhi and told that as per 2 am the following day, the rupee would be devalued by 36.5%.
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The paper conceded that the measure might he been inevitable, but if so, it asked why the government had, till very recently, been denying it would ever do this? It also deplored the obsession with foreign exchange and imports when the government was neglecting the real problem in the country, which was the terrible state of production after years of neglect of the private sector. Over the years, the paper was fair to Mrs Gandhi. Looking back at her years in ET’s 30th anniversary issue, Mr Baru was careful to note that her movement towards socialism and increased state control of the economy was caused as much by the attitude of Western powers, which from the late ‘60s, as the Cold War set in, refused to support Indian plans for public sector projects. This played a large role in forcing her towards the Soviet camp. In addition, the problems she faced, between famine and war, were unprecedented, and at least some of the steps she took then, like instituting the Green Revolution, were to pay off in the long run.Nonetheless, in the mid-70 s, as the chaos of the Jayaprakash Narayan-led agitation against her unfolded, there’s a real sense that the paper was unsure whom to support. Quite correctly, it distrusted the far Left elements on JP’s side, but it could not close its eyes to the government’s unfriendly attitude towards private business and its failure to provide basic services. One constant feature in those years is the coverage of power failures and the problems these cause to industry. This even shows up in the ads where electricity generators and power equipment feature in a big way, even showing up in combination with labour unrest in some ads.
Live EventsWith the imposition of the Emergency, as with most other papers in India, one can sense the paper mentally shutting down. With the end of the Emergency and Mrs Gandhi’s surprising decision to gamble on elections, ET remained cautious, unsure where things would go. But there is perhaps a sense of relief that can be seen when less radical politicians like Mr Desai and Vijaylakshmi Pandit join the Janata Party; their campaigns are enthusiastically covered. And when the verdict came in of Mrs Gandhi’s sweeping defeat, the paper’s edit was titled ‘Turning Point” , but it characteristically sounded a warning to the new rulers: “The Indian public is long suffering. It is prepared to accept discipline and self-sacrifice , but it needs to be convinced its privations he a purpose.” Essentially, it was saying that the business community had put up, and was willing to put up with more turmoil—as long as there was an assurance of good government down the line. The business community welcomed the election of Mr Desai as prime minister, and of HM Patel, an ICS-turnedpolitician , as finance minister. Somewhat less noticed in those days was the secretary of the department of economic affairs, a certain Dr Manmohan Singh who starts cropping up usually in connection with signing agreements with foreign governments for aid to India.
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As we know in hindsight, the Janata experiment ended in failure, and even more confused economic policies, not least the aggressive nationalism that chased out multinationals like Coca-Cola . Soon ET was back to being cautious about politics, and limiting itself to a certain wide-eyed stance as it covered some of the more bizarre aspects of the Janata years. One of the most memorable had to be the meeting between smugglers with Jayaprakash Narayan at Jaslok hospital.At that occasion, 75 of India’s top smugglers , led by Haji Mustan and Yusuf Patel (and accompanied by Murli Deora, who probably prefers not to remember this), solemnly took a pledge to renounce smuggling . ET’s reporter on the spot did note that “a majority of them did not seem very enthusiastic in repeating the pledge” .
Live EventsTHE ‘80s: RAJIV AND REALITY With the start of the ‘80s, Mrs Gandhi was back and ET’s readers were probably as happy as the rest of the country to see an end to the Janata chaos years. She was also being more cautious this time, and big-time economic shocks were out of the picture. The primacy of politics continued, of course, with the problems in Punjab while in Mumbai, there was the great Mill Strike that started in 1982, with side-effects like the unleashing of the underworld by mill owners, and other labour agitations. Even ET wasn’t spared this, when all the Bombay papers of Bennett Coleman were shut down by a strike across three months in ‘84. This meant the Bombay edition was out of action when Mrs Gandhi was gunned down on October 31 the same year, but the Delhi edition did cover it, and the ensuing riots, although on one day, November 3, it was forced to suspend publication. Despite the influence of such political events, this decade does differ from the ‘60s in one respect. Under the chaos of politics , some long-term changes were taking place that would put the Indian economy on a sounder footing, even if the effects weren’t always evident in the ‘80s. Mrs Gandhi was responsible for one, as was coincidentally captured by the November 1 edition that announced her death. On ET’s op-ed page, the sorrowing editorial ‘A Sad Day for India’ , is flanked by a long article on India’s food surplus. This was the real change from the food shortage days of the ‘60s, and it was a legacy that Mrs Gandhi, who had set in place the Green Revolution, would he appreciated. Articles like this, which point to deeper changes than captured by most political coverage, point to one of the values of ET’s coverage. Quite often, the superficially boring-sounding business articles it highlights indicate more longterm trends than the hurly-burly of political coverage. Another example can be seen in a low-key article that came out on November 15, 1984, after Rajiv Gandhi’s new government had started functioning (and so had ET’s Bombay edition after a hiatus of 92 days). The article simply said the Cabinet had taken a decision to allow foreign companies to start using foreign brand names again.
The policy this changed is a deservedly forgotten one. The argument for it, which ET’s report noted that some government departments were still trying to make, was that foreign brand names were unfairly preferred by Indian consumers, thus giving foreign companies an unfair advantage over Indian ones; hence the need to level the playing field by forcing companies to change their brand names. In its combination of a vindictive attitude towards foreign companies, disdain for consumers, dubious arguments in four of local companies, and lack of any real ability to implement it, the policy sums up the calculatedly unpleasant attitude of over-powerful bureaucrats at that time.
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It was a good sign then that Rajiv Gandhi’s new government realised this and agreed to drop the policy. This was probably less from any real commitment to the reduction of government control, as from an acknowledgement that it was stupid to continue with a policy that wasn’t working—the point is that Mr Gandhi’s government was ready to face reality, at least in certain small ways. Other positive changes would soon start coming, like the launch of the telecom mission that would lay the foundation for today’s booming telecom sector. Some of the signs of revived industrialisation could be surprising. On March 11, 1987, ET carried a story on the ubiquitous smuggling sector—except that instead of gold, the products being smuggled were ball-bearings ! The article estimated the size of this market as Rs 250 crore: “Smuggling of ball bearings into India has emerged as a most lucrative proposition for underworld professionals in the last six months.” Another sign through the ’80s was the rise of new industrialists like Dhirubhai Ambani, breaking through the ranks of Tatas, Birlas and others who had dominated the private sector since Independence.As always, the ads in ET signal the change. Through the ‘70s, these had mostly only been for hey industry, but now these were supplemented by ads for office automation products, including the one real hit business product of the decade—the photocopying machine. ET still featured stories on the jute sector, but an ad for Birla Jute in 1984 tells a slightly different story. Talking about the diversified activities of the company, it ends with a rather desperately hopeful tagline: “Birla Jute: The Name is Jute but the strength is Cement.”
Live EventsPolitical turmoil was still holding back necessary changes. Mr Gandhi’s mandate was wasted in the murk of Bofors and the problems of Mandal and Masjid. THE ‘90s: LIBERALISATION, FINALLY If the devaluation front page of June 6, 1966, was perhaps ET’s most dramatic ever in terms of sheer, sweeping business news, the front page for March 18, 1991, could run it close for impact, even though the presentation was more sedate. Simply titled “BoP Crisis in Offing” , it made clear what other papers had missed—occupied as they were by the drama of Chandra Shekhar’s resignation on March 6, which ended the farce of his government supported from outside by the Congress—which was that the Indian government was close to going broke. In the days that followed, ET uncovered the scale of the crisis, writing in an editorial entitled ‘Sledgehammer Blow’ : “Even when alarm bells ring incessantly, India’s policymakers are habituated to waking up only at the eleventh hour. There is no other explanation for the government allowing the economy’s external affairs to deteriorate over the years, and then months and weeks, before suddenly sitting up to realise a payment crisis is at hand. The result of hing to apply nine stitches where one would he done, if done in time, is that large parts of Indian industry will suddenly be stripped of raw materials, scores of projects will be stopped midstream and chaos will prevail...”
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In the months to follow, as parties continued to focus on the impending elections , it was bureaucrats in the Reserve Bank and finance ministry who would keep the economic patchwork together, setting the ground for changes that almost any government would he to make. The somewhat tragic surprise was that this was not to be led by Rajiv Gandhi again, but by PV Narasimha Rao, and erstwhile finance secretary, now turned finance minister, Manmohan Singh. When it came to Mr Singh’s landmark budget later that year, which is widely credited with setting liberalisation in motion , again ET got the picture correct. In its front-page story, this was uniquely a budget edition that did not lead with the details of the budget. Instead, as ET noted, the really dramatic change was the industrial policy, and that was what it put on centre stage. Here finally was the loosening of controls and the unshackling of the private sector that ET had been campaigning for since it started.The budget itself, as one tends to forget, actually included hey raises in taxes that would normally be anathema to ET, but that was needed for fiscal discipline . The real story was industrial policy and this was what ET, and the markets, were happy to cheer on. It had been a long time since the paper was set up in 1961, but finally the moment for the India growth story it had always hoped to cover had arrived.
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