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Business of photos: An archive of images from the 1970s - 1980s offers glimpses of Indian industry before liberalization
Photos don't just capture people and places; they freeze a moment in time. To those who know how to read them, photo archives can thus be fertile ground for research. Research on companies and promoters, of course. But also on processes and technologies. In the 1970s and 1980, Mahatta & Co shot images for MMTC, Maruti, handloom exports council, BHEL and Escorts, among other companies. Seeing photos from their archive now can be an exercise in nostalgia. But it can also an exercise in appreciating Indian industry before liberalization.
1/19
Annual reports might not seem like the most obvious place to look for a history of India. And yet photographs made for these reports through the 1970s and 1980s are the stuff of a rich archive at Delhi-based photo studio Mahatta & Co. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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Consider these images of the first-ever Maruti concept car produced at the company’s NCR factory. Don’t miss the car name embossed in Hindi at the back. (Photos via Mahatta & Co)
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Sanjay Gandhi is photographed in the passenger seat of this made-in-India car. Gandhi had set up Maruti Motors in 1971, with the dream of manufacturing a small car entirely in India. Challenges and delays abounded, and the company was on the brink of dissolution until Japanese car maker Suzuki agreed to buy stake in the beleaguered Maruti in 1981. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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The Maruti project saw some turbulence in the early years, but the company is still credited with building an ecosystem — bringing in new technology, equipping local vendors to make auto parts, setting up networks for distribution and servicing. These photos of the earliest days serve as reminders of how it all began — typically low-tech, often manual and understandably small-scale. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
5/19
Speaking of India's automotive history, in 1985, Escorts Ltd commissioned Mahatta & Co to shoot images for its annual report. Pavan Mahatta made photos of tractors, of course. But he also took pictures of Rajdoot GTS 175 mini motorcycles - which became known as the 'Bobby bike' after the Bollywood film starring Rishi Kapoor and Dimple Kapadia - and Rajdoot scooters. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
6/19
Photography came to India in 1839-40. Major advances in the technology have followed every few decades since. Mahatta remembers how back in the day, in order to eliminate the background or achieve a cutout effect as in this image, the photo was taken on a black-and-white negative and opaque red paint was applied by hand to block the light while printing. The areas painted thus came out white in the printed photo. The process - called photographic masking or negative opaquing - was laborious and required both skill and patience. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
7/19
India Inc has, of course, seen a lot of automation in the last 50 years. In these images from 1970, though, we can see workers sitting on the floor, sorting, measuring, segregating and running quality checks on Mica manually. (Photos by Madan Mahatta, courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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Mica is used for electrical and thermal insulation, but also to add shine in makeup products from eye shadows to highlighters. Though there are no children in these pictures, it has to be said that child labour in mica mining in Bihar and Jharkhand is a cause for worry even in the 2020s. (Photos by Madan Mahatta, courtesy Mahatta & Co)
9/19
The earliest photos in this set date back to 1967. Shot by Madan Mahatta for the Handicraft Handloom Exports Council (HHEC), the set includes a photo of the late cultural revivalist Pupul Jayakar (extreme right)... (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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... and the first ever fashion show by Pierre Cardin in India, at Delhi's Ashoka Hotel. The show included designs showcasing Indian textiles and techniques, and was attended by members of then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's family. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
11/19
India's corrugated packaging industry was, at best, nascent and unorganized in the 1970s. Pavan Mahatta recalls how his father, Madan Mahatta, travelled to the Perfectpac Ltd factory in Faridabad around 1976 for this shoot, commissioned by the promoter family - the Rajgarhias. Don't miss the writing on the wall. It says: For prosperity, increase production. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
12/19
Today, the company counts multinationals like Samsung, Whirlpool, LG, and Amazon among its clients. But even in the 1970s, it seems to have been making packaging for companies like Nestle and Goodyear. Perfectpac is listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). At the time of publishing, the stock was trading at around Rs 82.76. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
13/19
Incorporated in September 1963, Minerals and Metals Trading Corporation Ltd (MMTC) is today a Mini Ratna company. In this photo shoot commissioned by MMTC at Goa Diamonds in 1985, Pavan Mahatta clicked men and women operating machinery to cut and polish diamonds. MMTC still has a regional office in Goa. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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Perhaps it wasn't an unusual sight to see women in very technical jobs in the 1980s. In another shoot during this decade, Pavan Mahatta trained his lens on women working at Continental Device India Ltd (CDIL) silicon semiconductor factory in Mohali. Incorporated on 10 December 1964, CDIL exists to this day. (Photos courtesy Mahatta & Co)
15/19
A woman operating an IBM computer, Pavan Mahatta recalls that this shoot was commissioned by IBM, but not done at an IBM facility. Other details about this image seem to have been lost in the process of migrating the photos and metadata files to newer drives over the years. (Photo courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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And on women learning about bridge rectifiers at a Haryana electronics facility. (Photo courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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Madan Mahatta shot these photos in the mid-1980s. Back then, this Haryana electronics facility used to make television sets and solar panels. Indeed, the beginnings of India's investment in solar power can be traced back to this decade. (Photo courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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Around 1976-77, Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd (BHEL) commissioned the studio to make pictures of factories where it made turbines. (Photo courtesy Mahatta & Co)
19/19
As a register of what progress looked like pre-liberalization, and how far Indian industry has come, photo archives like this one can offer up forgotten nuggets and, perhaps, fresh perspectives. To an extent, they also drive nostalgia for a time when annual reports published photos that continue to speak to us decades later. (Photo courtesy Mahatta & Co)
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