Now they even have a name for it — Black Monday. Years from now, the current generation of brokers will talk with some horror of May 17, the day the market tanked 565 points. Old-timers will not be impressed. True, last week’s crash — with images of brokers glued to their TV screens, shouting furiously on their mobile phones as they took in every dip of the Sensex — will remain imprinted in their minds forever. Before the day was done they had even taken to the streets to shout slogans. “I’ve seen worse,” said broker Bharat Sunderlal, the fifth generation of his family trading in Asia’s oldest stock market, who recalls another day, 30 years back, when brokers had taken to the streets — not to scream but to trade. Sunderlal, of course, is referring to July 6, 1974, the worst ever crash on Bombay Stock Exchange when the market plunged by nearly 25 per cent. That’s double the 11.1 per cent Sensex crash on May 17. Those were the glory days of the licence raj, and the plunge followed the introduction of restrictions on the payment of dividends by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Then, as now, the stock markets were highly sensitive to information. But there was no internet or mobile phones and while news travelled as fast as it could through word of mouth, it came too late for some to trade officially on the market. On the streets, however, stocks were sold in an open-air bazaar till late into the night. The details are still fresh in the minds of those present that day. ‘‘Century Mills, blue chip of the time, fell from Rs 600.50 to Rs 424 overnight,’’ recalls 73-year-old M R Mayya, former executive director of the Bombay Stock Exchange. There was no sensitive index at the time, so how was the crash measured? The Indian Express dug into old records to find that the Reserve Bank of India scruplously maintained a market report. ‘‘All major stock exchanges were officially closed from July 6,’’ says the July 1974 edition of the RBI market report. ‘‘In the unofficial deals, share prices were reported to have declined 20-25 per cent over the last official quotation.’’ In those days, the stock market was open only from 12 to 2 pm, but ‘kerb deals’ were stuck on the streets throughout the day. ‘‘It was a 24-hour market,’’ explains the Sunderlal. ‘‘Everyone just wanted to get rid of their shares that day,’’ recalls Vasantlal Kantilal Shah (80), former vice-president of BSE. Shah was in a board meeting that afternoon when the then BSE chairman Phiroze Jeejeebhoy, after whom the 29-floor stock-exchange tower is named, informed them of the ordinance. ‘‘None of us moved, except one member who was a heavy speculator,’’ says Shah. Those days, the markets were more about speculation than investment. Sunderlal, then 18 and still in college, could not find his father when word of the crash filtered in. He rushed with his uncle for kerb trading. "They were," he recalls, ‘‘selling like crazy.’’ Panicky brokers hammered share prices till July 13, a week after the crash, when official trading was allowed again. However, the market was reopened with a ‘floor price’ that was 17 per cent below the official price. Shah explains that the government later amended the Act. Thirty years later, he can be cool. From his drawer he fishes out an ageing hand-made graph on market movements. ‘‘You see, every five years there will be a big crash,’’ he explains. ‘‘That is the nature of markets the world over.’’
