India: Quality before Quality
The Silver Age
In the days when historians assumed that history began with Greece, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded the first known reference to cotton grown in India: “Certain wild trees bear wool instead of fruit, which in beauty and quality excels that of sheep; and the Indians make their clothing from these trees.”
Arab travelers in the ninth century India reported: “In this country they make garments of such extraordinary perfection that nowhere else is their like to be seen … sewed and woven to such a degree of fineness, they may be drawn through a ring of moderate size.”
But weaving was only one of the many handicrafts of India. Europe looked up to Indian expertise in almost every line of manufacture: wood-work, metal-work, bleaching, dyeing, tanning, soap-making, glass-blowing, gun powder, fireworks, and cement. Much of the gold used in the fifth century BC came from India.
The Golden Age
Ashoka’s famous many-pillared hall in his palace at Pataliputra was partly dug out by archeologists about a century ago. In his official report, Dr W A Spooner of the Archaeological Department of India stated that the hall was “in an almost incredible state of preservation; the logs which formed it being as smooth and perfect as the day they were laid, more than two thousand years ago.”
He further added that the “marvelous preservation of the ancient wood, whose edges were so perfect that the very lines of jointure were indistinguishable, evoked admiration of all those who witnessed the experiment. The whole was built with a precision and reasoned care that could not possibly be excelled today…. In short, the construction was an absolute perfection of such work.”
The art of tempering and casting iron was developed long before its known appearance in Europe. Vikramaditya, for example, erected in Delhi (circa 380 AD) an iron pillar that stands untarnished even after sixteen centuries. The quality of metal, or manner of treatment which has preserved the pillar from rust or decay, is still a mystery to modern science.
The Platinum Age…or is it?
Centuries later, the industrial revolution taught Europe to scale up manufacturing operations more economically, and Indian industry faded into obscurity – being unable to stave off the competition.
The incredible growth of world-wide competition in the past fifty years – led at different times by American, German, and Japanese companies – has shaken modern business to its very core. The prime movers for the success of these companies have been reliability engineering and customer-focused management. People around the world thus have access to quality products.
This blog is an excerpt from the article ‘Such a long journey…’ by Suresh Lulla for the TATA REVIEW JULY 2014.
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Click here to buy his new book: Quality Fables–now available on Amazon Kindle
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