Bata: A multinational that stole Indian hearts | M.R. Narayan Swamy

BOOK REVIEW

Batanagar: A Personal History of India’s Forgotten Company Town

by Paramita Sen

Pan Macmillan India
Pages: xxi + 225

It goes to the credit of Bata that it merged so beautifully with Indian ethos that millions for a long time never suspected that it was a multinational from Europe.

Bata’s quiet birth in India during the British rule, its steady expansion both before and after the country’s independence, and its closeness to the icons of the freedom movement gave the impression that it was an Indian company.

It was Bata after all which provided millions of Indians their first decent footwear and at an affordable price too.

Bata Shoe Company was founded in the tiny town of Ziln in Moravia in Czechoslovakia. It was the time of tremendous political upheavals in war-hit Europe.

It was in 1926, when India’s struggle for independence gathered pace, that Bata opened two stores in Calcutta and Bombay. Seven years later, a factory was born at Konnagar in India; a township near Calcutta called Batanagar followed a few years later.

Paramita Sen, whose father was a senior executive in Batanagar, has authored a gripping story of a once modest shoe shop in Ziln that blossomed to a smalltown factory and finally became a mammoth multinational with subsidiaries around the world.

Sen, who has fond memories of her childhood and growing years in Batanagar, writes with such passion that you easily lose yourself in the world of Bata.

After all, Bata’s growth and growth (and later decline) is a success story of the first wave of globalisation that happened before privatisation, globalisation and liberalisation became almost dirty words.

Such was the company’s outlook that despite the obvious desire to make profits, it created a township where sectarian differences receded and where job losses and labour exploitation were heard of. Utopia?

In the process, both Bata employees – Hindus, Muslims and Christians – and their families were exposed to an internationalism which were both liberating and empowering.

Bata manufactured in India, to begin with, low-cost and low-priced rubber shoes that immediately caught Indians’ fancy. The most famous of these was Jan Marka 556. A later waterproof Susta Juta (cheap shoe) became a must for Indians during monsoon. By 1936, around 35 types of rubber shoes were being produced in Batanagar and sold rapidly across undivided India.

Bata India saw its first labour unrest in 1939 over poor pay and complaints of racial segregation. The company’s Czech owners took immediate corrective steps, leading to respect for diversity, pluralism and secular values. Management-labour relations were quickly reset.

From the 1930s, partly due to nudging from Jawaharlal Nehru, Indians were promoted to head different departments in Bata. The speed picked up after independence. By then, Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi had visited Ziln in Europe. Rabindranath Tagore toured Batanagar and spoke warmly about the factory and township.

Post World War II, while Bata expanded tremendously in Western Europe, its factories were taken over in Eastern Europe by the new communist governments. But the war also helped Bata’s profits to zoom as it produced shoes for soldiers in hundreds of thousands. A second factory in Asia was born in Singapore; a Batapur emerged in Lahore. In 1947, Bata India was split into Indian and Pakistani branches!

But what really made Bata a household name in independent India was its blockbuster hawai chappal – which was very affordable. As its footprint grew, many more popular products followed including the ubiquitous plain white canvas shoes – which, at one point, became a virtual school uniform in India.

In 1973, under pressure from the Indian government, Bata went public. The Bata Shoe Company became Bata India Ltd. In 1987, Bata made its way to southern India – and later to Haryana.

When India opened up its economy in 1991, Bata didn’t do well. As regulations on the footwear industry eased, franchise-operated, capital-light brands took advantage of low-cost outsourcing, putting Bata in a disadvantage. Global competition added to the challenges. Like many other companies, Bata quit West Bengal due to unending labour disputes. One strike caused a loss of Rs 8.5 crore.

Bata India did rebound when it embraced modernisation and readjusted to the needs and aspirations of a changing India. By then, our author’s father had bid goodbye to Bata. And it was time for the grown up Paramita Sen to find new wings. She now lives in the United States