Page 67 - Gujar Mal Modi

elements with vested interests from outside the town. In complete disregard of

the advice given by the police and the authorities Mr. Modi himself went to the
meetings and calmly advised the workers that if they had any com plaints, they

were free to come to him personally for redress. This bold approach adopted
by Mr. Modi had the desired effect for it removed many misunderstandings be-

tween the workers and the management. A deteriorating labour situation was
thus brought under control. His dynamic approach brought him success in many

similar situations.

The new flour mill at Okhla in New Delhi was inaugurated on 14th May, 1959. In
the same year it was decided to start pro duction of finer varieties of cloth in the

textile mill as these were found to be more profitable than the coarse and me-
dium varieties manufactured there so far. Mr. Kedar Nath Modi and Mr. Krishna

Kumar Modi undertook a 25-day tour of Switzerland, Italy, Germany and other
European countries to explore the possibilities of purchasing the latest type of

textile machinery from these countries. The same year a new distillery was also
established to manufacture power alcohol.

Modi’s Prefect Soap had been doing very well in the market. In the initial stag-
es some difficulty was experienced in promo ting its sales because the Modis

could not afford to spend huge amounts of money on promotional publicity and
the traders were interested in selling only the established brands of toilet soaps.

Therefore, the company’s own salesmen had to be engaged to create initial de-
mand for the soap.Later on, due to its better quality, the demand for the soap

picked up and the traders and shop-keepers too began to show interest in its
sale. The mechanism of price-controls, which did not apply to Modi soaps, also

helped in pushing up their sales. How ever, during World War II, the Government
put a ban on the import of the perfume which was used in the manufacture of

the Prefect toilet soap. This had a serious effect on the quality, Sometime later
there was another serious development which forced Modis and several other

big manufacturers of toilet soaps to discontinue the production of toilet soaps.
Lever Brothers and some other foreign firms manufacturing soaps in India de-

cided to create monopoly conditions for their toilet soaps by resorting to the
technique of heavily under-selling their product. This process continued to such

an extent that it became impo sible for other manufacturers to get back even the

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