THE NEW NANO
Despite the shocks of a global recession and the handbrake turn of demonetisation, the Indian car industry is doing well. The small car industry that is. As in really, really, tiny cars… At Welby industries in Toy City NOIDA, the shop floor rings and whirs as an assembly line of workers assembles a wide range of diminutive models, most of which will make their way to export markets. It’s not just cars of course— there are plenty of other vehicles in production, from motorcycles and scooters to steam trains and ships. Apart from the ‘pop pop’ boats, which are arguably propelled by ‘internal combustion,’ everything else here is driven by tried and tested clockwork engines and friction wheel drives. This is a nostalgia factory after all, and Paresh Chawla, the entrepreneur-tinkerer-enthusiast behind the company, is happy to acknowledge the inspiration drawn from his own collection of vintage tin toys from all over the world and the legacy of now defunct Indian toy factories from which he has acquired precious dies and toolings—and, on occasion, skilled workers. Tin toy manufacturers flourished across the world for much of the 20th century and though India came late to the party, it was also one of the last places where the industry thrived. By the 1990s as Indian children finally tired of the antiquated little machines, tin toys were already being retrieved as collectible relics of remembered childhoods elsewhere in the world. It’s a Toy Story, a Lilliputian fable but also a microcosm of the real world: as with everything else the real competition is the leviathan next door. Then again, Chawla says Welby has received its first enquiries from China…