Just a week back, India has become the proud owner of the cheapest car in the world, the Nano, considered as the grand vision of Ratan Tata. It has given the Auto industry the biggest shock in recent times-with rivals announcing, producing, coming out with their own versions of the Poor man’s car to get a slice of the vast yet untapped market in India. The Nano has taken India’s Jugaad(manage) mentality to previously untouched heights and resulted in a spate of innovations in building materials to engines to space utilization.
Nano has been greeted with great joy and anticipation from the huge lower-middle class of India, with taxi drivers to milkmen to laundrymen, each already dreaming up innovative ways of customizing the car to suit their needs: the taxi driver thinking of fitting a CNG cylinder in the boot and making space for luggage on the roof, and the local Chat joint thinking of turning mobile with the Nano.
However, it is not difficult to see the impact this Poor man’s car will have on the already precarious conditions of the roads and fuel prices. Being a resident of Bangalore, which already sees hours of productivity wasted in Traffic jams on a daily basis, the anticipated flood of Nanos on the roads already gives one nightmares. Further, the escalated demand for fuel will send the prices of oil soaring in the domestic market and prove to be a severe strain on a government already struggling to control the petrol prices even as Oil hits 100$ per barrel. What happens when the milkman buys the Nano but cannot afford the fuel to put in it? Don’t we come back to square 1 with only the more affluent being able to afford ‘transportation’? Or to a more drastic scenario of fuel rationing by the government and a step in the reverse direction of not liberalizing the economy but restricting it.
If providing affordable efficient transportation to the masses in price sensitive India was Tata’s aim, he has taken a bold step to achieve it, albeit in a very Businessman-ish fashion of price-volume dynamics. However, the term ‘transportation’ is not only the vehicle itself: it comprises of the Triad of the vehicle, the fuel and the roads. One pillar of this triad cannot stand without the cooperation of the other two. Therefore I have my doubts whether his vision can become a reality in its complete sense.
Although Ratan Tata may be seen as the liberator of the masses, the messiah of the common man for the moment, he definitely did not have socialism as his aim, else he would have thought of providing a more efficient privatized public transportation system, or undertaken some grand roadways projects. But traffic choked roads, spiraling fuel prices or pedestrian safety are not his concerns.
Nano has been greeted with great joy and anticipation from the huge lower-middle class of India, with taxi drivers to milkmen to laundrymen, each already dreaming up innovative ways of customizing the car to suit their needs: the taxi driver thinking of fitting a CNG cylinder in the boot and making space for luggage on the roof, and the local Chat joint thinking of turning mobile with the Nano.
However, it is not difficult to see the impact this Poor man’s car will have on the already precarious conditions of the roads and fuel prices. Being a resident of Bangalore, which already sees hours of productivity wasted in Traffic jams on a daily basis, the anticipated flood of Nanos on the roads already gives one nightmares. Further, the escalated demand for fuel will send the prices of oil soaring in the domestic market and prove to be a severe strain on a government already struggling to control the petrol prices even as Oil hits 100$ per barrel. What happens when the milkman buys the Nano but cannot afford the fuel to put in it? Don’t we come back to square 1 with only the more affluent being able to afford ‘transportation’? Or to a more drastic scenario of fuel rationing by the government and a step in the reverse direction of not liberalizing the economy but restricting it.
If providing affordable efficient transportation to the masses in price sensitive India was Tata’s aim, he has taken a bold step to achieve it, albeit in a very Businessman-ish fashion of price-volume dynamics. However, the term ‘transportation’ is not only the vehicle itself: it comprises of the Triad of the vehicle, the fuel and the roads. One pillar of this triad cannot stand without the cooperation of the other two. Therefore I have my doubts whether his vision can become a reality in its complete sense.
Although Ratan Tata may be seen as the liberator of the masses, the messiah of the common man for the moment, he definitely did not have socialism as his aim, else he would have thought of providing a more efficient privatized public transportation system, or undertaken some grand roadways projects. But traffic choked roads, spiraling fuel prices or pedestrian safety are not his concerns.
Transportation for the masses is a Systems Design problem, and needs to have Systems thinking applied to it, else as we may soon find out, the cure may be worse than the disease. The Butterfly has just flapped its wings, lets see when the cyclone comes up….
