Smuggler raj to swaraj

But what has changed, most of all, is the merchandise. Walk through the narrow corridors, past overflowing public toilets, hi-fi shops still playing loud music, and the product mix is about the same: High-fashion clothing, electronics, watches, toys, gadgets.

Then try and find one thing that is smuggled. And mind you, we are walking through what was once India’s most notorious — and popular — market for foreign goods, mostly smuggled. So if you did not have aunts who travelled to London and picked up your underwear from Marks and Spencer, you scoured the shops in Heera Panna.

If your father did not have the contacts to swing a camera or a stereo past the customs, you came here, like a thief, to look for one. No receipts or warranties were asked for, and none offered. This was socialist India’s Grey Market No. 1.

The shops still sell similar goods. But the branded clothing is almost all swadeshi, Provogue, Colour Plus, Kouton and so on, but of international quality. Not only the fabric, the collars and the buttons and the inseams, little things that define quality and comfort, even the packaging and display are now of international quality. Only the prices are about a half of the London high-street equivalent.

You ask the shopowners how the change came about and the answer emerges immediately. The opening up of the economy, liberalised imports brought competition as well as the tools to compete. So you could import big foreign brands and sell them at fancy five-star hotel shops at high prices, but these manufacturers could also import the collar linings, the buttons and the threads and, most important of all, the machines to get that international finish.

At a reception in Mumbai last Saturday to mark the launch of a massive special economic zone I run into M.Y. Noorani who, in 1955, two years before I was born, launched the Zodiac brand. Now he chides me for wearing a foreign-made shirt and reminds me that this year he exported four million — that is forty lakh — shirts, mostly to big brand houses and several lakhs even to the London manufacturer whose label I was wearing.

Reform, the ability to import fabric — linen from Australia, fine cotton from Italy — and little props and machinery have given him the competitive edge and he is so proud of his Made in India label.

It is actually somebody else who reminds you that the first showroom the thugs targeted in the riots in Ahmedabad last year was Zodiac’s. Old Mr Noorani, at 73, is too forgiving, too proud to even mention this.

The same goes for the shoes. India always produced and exported very fine uppers. Now you can import the best graphite-rubber soles and the machinery to marry the two. The result is world-quality shoes.

Even Reebok and Nike showrooms stock mostly shoes made in India. You walk into a shop selling fancy watches, Longines, Christian Dior, Tag Heur, ask the owner if these are smuggled and he reacts with holy outrage. “No sir, everything is legally imported and duty paid. Actually we are the authorised agents for these.”

The only patch of grey I can see here is a shop with cellphones on display but do your own checking at your city’s old, smuggled goods market and you will see the change, from Palika Bazar in Delhi to Kidderpore in Kolkata.

Now, how did this come about? What drove the smuggler out of business? Surely not your customs, and most certainly not your swadeshi campaigner. We may be more enthusiastic than before when it comes to waving the tricolour but we are not about to become so “patriotic” as to buy inferior goods at higher prices just because they happen to be made in India.

In the socialist-swadeshi, licence-quota and rationing-and-shortages days, Made in India, particularly for items of day-to-day use, was synonymous for poor quality. Indian underwear was notorious and spawned a flourishing industry of itch-creams.

If your Indian-made toothbrush lasted a week it was probably because God had himself sculpted you a perfect jaw. Your shaving blades were better at nicking your face than at scraping the overnight growth.

There was a booming grey market in such “high” technology goods as nail-cutters, tweezers, pens and combs. Where has it all disappeared? In fact, underwear, light bulbs, nail-cutters and shaving blades, Ambassador and Premier Padmini were abiding symbols of the our lousy manufacture.

All that is changing now. Hindustan Motors, the producer of the Ambassador, is actually making international quality cars and components now, and reaching out successfully in international markets.

THIS 56th Independence Day, therefore, let us celebrate this remarkable freedom from the smuggling raj that made us feel like thieves. You no longer have to worry about the prying eye of the customs officer as you walk in through the airport, you no longer have to buy your household goods or gadgets from a smuggler or find an influential uncle who could get you the first pick of the new “arrivals” at the “confiscated goods” shop run by the customs.

If you still have doubts as to how real this turnaround is, read Arun Shourie’s three-part series in this newspaper this long weekend. It is perhaps the most passionate and convincing case anybody has made for reform. That too in a political system where the party line, usually, is sad and defeatist. Something like, “WTO is a reality, you have to prepare to face it,” or “globalisation is inevitable, you have to learn to live with it.”

It is like saying, a jail sentence is now inevitable so let us at least improve the conditions in our prisons. As Shourie shows in his treatise, our decade-long “tryst” with reform, despite the hiccups, the self-doubts, sabotage, fits and starts, intellectual bankruptcy, suspicion emanating from our socialist instincts, rhetoric and hypocrisy, has been entirely rewarding. The evidence for what he tells you so succinctly lies in your own local Heera Panna.

At this time (the Raksha Bandhan week) last year, the fearful stereotype was the Chinese rakhi. It had invaded our markets after their sparklers the preceding Diwali.

This, finally, was the end of our manufacturing, said our swadeshi reflex.Please call Arun Jaitely’s office now and ask for the figures. Not only have we built a healthy trade surplus with China, a lot of our exports are manufactured goods. Hero Cycles is the world’s biggest manufacturer of bicycles now, and not some cheapy, unpronounceable Chinese brand. And the allegedly inevitable invasion of Chinese motorcycles never happened.

If the current growth in exports continues and if the value of the rupee is not kept artificially inflated to play to the grandma in the gallery, chances are that this year India’s non-oil trade will have a surplus. Manufacturing, which was supposed to have passed into history, is our fastest growing sector. Isn’t that something to celebrate this Independence Day?

Besides, indeed, the freedom from the smuggler, from fear of foreign competition and from the completely misplaced, self-inflicted but mortal phobia of our own inability to compete.
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