Those 50 years of DCM
Companies often spend a small fortune to bring out glossy brochures. But we, readers in a hurry, dunk it in the dustbin in no time, often unopened. Then I recently came across a “souvenir” brought out by Delhi Cloth Mills (now DCM) in 1939 to commemorate its golden jubilee. The hard purple cover has withstood the test of time. The outline of the Qutub Minar is embossed on the front and back jackets, perhaps to emphasis that the company was the first modern large-scale industrial enterprise of Delhi. The pages have come off the jacket but are intact.
The black & white pictures belong to a different era. The first printed page carries pictures of the nine directors: six Hindus, two Sikhs (one of them is Sobha Singh, Khushwant Singh’s father) and one Muslim. Three of them are in western coat and necktie; the other six are dressed in bandhgala jackets. Six wear the headgear recommended for their community. Another picture inside shows Lala Shri Ram and Lala Shankar Lall, the promoters of the company, and the former’s three sons: Muril Dhar, Bharat Ram and Charat Ram. All except Bharat Ram and Charat Ram, the Young Turks, wear achkans with tight pyjamas. Another picture that stands out is of a sugarcane farm at Daurala where the company had put up a sugar mill. Two strapping men in suit and hat, one of them an Englishman with a Sola topee, stand in the field and the sugarcane is almost twice as tall. The second photograph shows a tractor in the fields pulling a plough. It’s an all-metal ensemble — there are no rubber tyres!
The souvenir boasts that in the last 50 years, only twice the company’s record of “maintaining happy and cordial relations with its workpeople has been marred” — in 1930 and 1934. In 1934, it adds, “the strike was a minor incident in which only a relatively small portion of the workpeople were involved”. The strikers “later admitted that they had been incited by outside agitators and they had no justifiable grievances”.
The company, the souvenir says, has set up an akhara, gymnasium, swimming pool, showers, and theatre hall et cetera for its workers. The souvenir has pictures of workers taking showers, swimming and diving, and grappling at the akhara. The gymnasium has a steel slide, and three workers, clad only in langots, are sliding down, while two others wait their turn. There is also a shot of the hospital run by the company. The beds are occupied and the blankets are neatly tucked in the side over the patients. The man in charge of the hospital was obviously anxious to show how everything was in military-camp-like order! Some of the patients look distinctly uncomfortable under the tucked-in blankets.
There is a table right at the beginning which compares the company’s assets and financials between 1891 (the first year of production) and 1939. It may be a mishmash of balance sheet and profit & loss, but the numbers are interesting. While sales went up from Rs 1,97,489 in 1891 to Rs 1,84,12,729 in 1939, profits zoomed from Rs 1,340 to Rs 1,02,64,860. This, mind you, was just before the Second World War when most Indian businessmen made huge profits. Both Lala Shri Ram and Lala Shankar Lall were knighted during the war.
bhupesh.bhandari@bsmail.in