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Import substitution and India’s fountain pen industry

This article in the Mint newspaper describes how wave after wave of regulation designed to protect domestic industry ended up mostly unmaking it, particularly for fountain pens – an instrument dear to me. Makes for interesting, unfortunate reading:

Fountain pens were, curiously, in a list of 8 ‘prohibited items’ in 1954, meaning they could not be imported freely – until 2001.

Then fountain pens were brought under Small Scale Industry restrictions in the 1960s, which meant no new ‘large enterprises’ could manufacture them – but existing large ones could continue to: “… even today, if price of a fountain pen is less than  ₹100, it is still reserved for production by the SSI sector”.

And in the 1970, rigid labour laws made life difficult for manufacturing operations across sectors, but also for the remaining large manufacturers of pens, leaving the market to small cottage industries, which neither had access to changing pen technology nor to economies of scale, effectively making it uncompetitive.

Wilson Pens in Andheri and Mhatre Pens in Dadar are both defunct. Airmail in Vile Parle is still operational. Deccan Pen Store is a charming store in Abids in Hyderabad with excellent and patient service, as is Ratnam in Rajahmundry. But they’re all cottage businesses. Camlin and Flair are larger, but they’re not going to compete with Hero any time soon.

And while I love using my Deccan Advocate, Camlin Trinity, Flair Inky and ancient Oliver and Ratnam, they’re sadly not in the same league as my Lamy Safari (leave alone Al-Star), Pilot Metropolitan and even my twenty-five year old Hero hooded nib pens. The Indian companies just don’t have models that compete in build and finish.