Engineering a nation: The precious legacy of HMT

ON sept 15, the 164th natal day of ace of the sharpest minds of older Mysore, Bharat Ratna Sir Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Sir MV), was commemorated by the political ecesis with the usual speeches. It was also celebrated, perhaps more reverently, by a large subgroup of Indian professionals, many of them graduates of colleges in Bangalore, who look up to Sir MV not so much for his considerable administrative achievements as Diwan of Mysore (1912-1918) as for his belief in, commitment to, and excellence at their own branch of study – engineering. (Since 1967, Sir MV’s birthday has been commemorated as Engineers’ Day.)With his ringing declaration ‘Industrialise or perish!’ Sir MV placed himself squarely in the crosshairs of his formidable and equally sharp contemporary, Mahatma Gandhi, a strong advocate for a return to Indian handicraft and the self-sufficient village economy, which had been destroyed by Britain’s Industrial Revolution. Between them, Sir MV, who grew up in extreme poverty as the son of a Sanskrit scholar, and Gandhiji, who, as the son of the Diwan of Porbandar state, had been raised in privilege, represented the irresolvable tug-of-war betwixt modernity and tradition.Fortunately for Sir MV, Nalvadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar, the Maharaja he served, was firmly in his corner. Beginning with the establishment of Asia’s largest hydro-electric project at Shivanasamudra in 1902, which brought electricity to Bangalore in 1905, Mysore industrialised at a rapid rate, setting up iron and steel works, major dams, and factories for the manufacture of sandalwood oil, paper, sugar, electric bulbs, chemicals, fertilizers, paints, varnish, glass and porcelain, apart from science and engineering colleges, of which the venerable Indian Institute of Science and the University Visvesvaraya College of Engineering were shining examples. When India became independent, Mysore state – by then, its capital, Bangalore, had its own aircraft factory – was one of the country’s most science-forward, industrialised, and technologically robust regions.It is easy to see why, in 1953, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, with his vision of an industrially and infrastructurally self-sufficient nation, picked Bangalore for the establishment of one of his dream projects, a ‘temple of modern India’ called Hindustan Machine Tools (HMT), formed as a joint venture with Oerlikon Machine Tool Works of Switzerland (Oerlikon divested its stake in 1956). Attracting the brightest engineering minds of its generation into its workforce, the fully state-owned HMT was the force behind the fledgling Indian industry, conceptualising, designing, and custom-building the mother machines that would power the country in fields as diverse as manufacturing, printing, dairy, defence, railways, power plants, lamps, automobiles, and space research. In short, wherever metal needed cutting, grinding, milling, drilling, or turning, HMT was there.It was only close to a decade later, in 1962, that HMT diversified into what made the brand so beloved in the popular imagination – wristwatches (never mind that Nehru’s hope that wearing one would make Indians punctual is yet to be realised). In 1971, the company created another successful new vertical, a manufacturing plant for the iconic HMT tractor.By the early 1990s, just before the Indian economy was unshackled, the company was a behemoth, employing over 30,000 people in its 16 manufacturing units across 10 states, with a combined annual turnover of ₹9,000 million. Soon after, however, as it did for other PSUs that had reigned supreme in a protectionist economy, liberalization sounded the death knell for HMT.Although it continues to contribute significantly to India’s defence and space industries, HMT is now a shadow of its former glorious self. But its first- and second-gen engineers, who remember with much nostalgia taking the blue-grey HMT bus to work and back along Bangalore’s quiet, tree-lined streets, can take justifiable pride in the knowledge that the country’s private sector manufacturing revolution was kickstarted by none other than talented HMT alumni.Roopa Pai is a writer who has carried on a longtime love affair with her hometown Bengaluru.