Living on a shoestring

INDEPENDENCE SPECIAL/ EXECUTIVE LIFESTYLE

In 1953, Kusum Gupta's parents spent Rs 40,000 on their daughter's wedding to an officer in the Indian Railways. The sum seems substantial by 1950s' standards.

"Well, Rs 10,000 was actually given to us for a car which we couldn't buy," recalls Gupta, now 73, and settled in Delhi with her husband who retired as advisor to the Railway Board.

The Guptas did not get a car not because Rs 10,000 was insufficient to buy one. "We did not have the money to run it," Gupta chuckles. "I ran the household on about Rs 250 a month," she adds.

A stingy budget ruled out partying or eating out. Vegetables that cost rupee one a kilo were considered steep and deleted from the menu. Most greens were priced at under 50 paisa a kilo.

The Guptas finally bought their first car in 1967: a Fiat, for Rs 16,000. Suddenly, the pressure on Kusum Gupta's budget mounted. Constant postings to new cities pushed them to admit the two kids to boarding school (Mayo College, Ajmer). "I had to really economise to shell out Rs 700 a year per child," she recalls. 
 

COST OF LIVING IN THE 1950s*
Middle level gross salary (govt and private sector)	Rs 250 to Rs 350 a month
Ghee	Rs 3 for 900 gms
Atta	Rs 2 for 4 kg
Fine rice	Rs 5 for 3.5 kg
Vegetables	Rs 0.50 per kg
Car	Rs 8,000-Rs 10,000
Petrol	Rs 0.70 a litre
Electricity bill	Rs 5 to Rs 6 a month
*Approximate figures

In the early 1960s her only indulgence was that occasional saree she bought with the Rs 100 her mother gave whenever she visited her parents. She could either blow up the money on a single zari saree or buy two printed silk sarees that cost about Rs 35 to Rs 40 each.

Gupta may have been frugal in her ways, but Sajjan Devi, 78, had a tough time reining in her spendthrift husband.

"Like most Rajputs he found it difficult to adjust to a job and he liked to live well," she remembers. Devi, who got married in 1948, followed her husband to Kolkata (then Calcutta). He made Rs 500 a month, of which Rs 90 was spent on house rent.

Food was cheap. One seer (approximately 900 gms) ghee cost Rs 3. Fine rice was priced at Rs 5 for 4 seers. Flour cost Rs 2 for 5 seers. The electricity bill came to Rs 5 or Rs 6 a month and the dhobi washed 10 clothes for a rupee.

In the same city, Girish Mohan lived like a brown sahib on a lower monthly salary of Rs 350. A management graduate from the UK, he found a job with Andrew Yule's paper mill. "I joined as an 'assistant' "" an officer at the lowest level," recalls the 77-year-old who lives with his wife in south Delhi.

The job came with a fully-furnished house and servant. In 1962 Mohan moved to Duncan's for Rs 600. His housing was paid for and he had a car and a driver. The company also bought him memberships of three clubs in Calcutta. "I think one club charged about Rs 30 a month," he says.

Interestingly, in the 1950s, the gap between government salaries and those in the private sector was almost nil. A gentleman who briefly joined the Central Intelligence Bureau as a sub-inspector in 1954 had a basic salary of Rs 160.

He earned a handsome Rs 80 as DA when he was posted in Ladakh. The corporate sector may have been paying middle-level managers Rs 600, but the IAS officers at the same level also enjoyed the Rs 350 to Rs 800 grade.