Fwd: Editorial on a HARMFUL 'Nano'

[Guest guest]

I am forwarding the Editorial of the latest Edition of Down To Earth.

Very interesting in all aspects of Nano the Lakhtakia Car and its

impact on short term and long term life on this planet and may be

other ones too.

 

vns

 

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Down to Earth - Editorial: The right right

(By Sunita Narain)

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The world’s cheapest car, the Nano, rolls out in India this week.

Manufacturer Tata Motors says it will change the way Indians drive,

for the inauguration places the personal car within the reach of

people who once could only dream of owning one. Indeed, the Nano has

been marketed as an ‘aspiration’- the right of every Indian to a car.

No quibble here. There is no question an affordable car is better than

an expensive one; or that a small car, being more fuel efficient, is

better than a big one. No question, too, that every citizen of India

has as much right to a car as every citizen of America, where vehicle

numbers are obscene: some 800 vehicles for 1,000 people (old and

young) against our measly 7 per 1,000 people (urban and rural).

 

Let me roll out my concerns. The issue is not the Nano. The issue is

all cars and whether cars still are the future of the world economy.

Over years, in different continents, vehicle manufacturers invented

and re-invented this appliance for self-mobility, for different market

segments. In India, two-wheeler manufacturers can rightly claim that

over the 1980s they, too, provided technology innovation and

affordable mobility for vast numbers. They can also claim they were

the first to break the class barrier. Then, in the early 1990s, when

Sanjay Gandhi’s people’s car, the Maruti 800, hit the roads, gender

barriers also fell - this was a car women could drive and it gave new

freedoms. No question, therefore, of what Nano will bring to new

owners.

 

But this launch comes at a time when the production of personal

vehicles itself is becoming old - economy. It is not surprising the

car industry has become the first big dinosaur of the 21st century.

Every country today is working to bail out its automobile industry.

The big four companies are still on the brink of closure. There is

huge over -capacity in the world of cars - sales are down and the

industry is bleeding. You might think it is a temporary phase: cars

will zoom again, as recession blues turn pink. But this is far from

the reality.

 

The fact is cars could only make it big in the old economy because

they were highly subsidized, or incentivized through cheap bank loans.

If people could not afford the next car, the bank worked overtime to

make sure the loans kept rolling, even if that eventually broke the

bank’s back. But that is the past. The future, too, will not be too

different. The bank might recover, but the cost of the fuel to drive

the dream vehicle will not. Oil experts will tell you black gold

prices will rise again, when the world economy re-boots.

 

Add to this what can only be called the mother of all subsidies - the

free-ride personal vehicles have got, in the world, to emit large

amounts of greenhouse gases and pump them into a common atmospheric

space. As the rights over this ecological commons will be determined,

as they must, carbon dioxide emissions from the cars of the rich will

have to be limited and taxed. This will cost. It will make driving

more expensive.

 

The global automobile industry knows it is not our future. It is our

past. Unfortunately, this message has not yet come home. Unlike the

car-saturated West, we still have a large number of people who are

potential buyers. But the fact is in India, because of the even

greater price-sensitivity, personal vehicles are viable only if they

are subsidized to the brim.

 

Take the Nano. My colleague Chandra Bhushan has calculated the

incentives rolled out by Narendra Modi’s Gujarat government amount to

a fat write-off - as much as Rs 50,000-60,000 per this Rs 1 lakh car.

In other words, its cost is so low only because the state has doled

out a largesse. Every past and present automobile has got this benefit

(more or less). We can afford a car because our government pays for

it. We can also afford it because we are not asked to pay the price of

its running - the tax on cars is lower than what buses pay in our

socialist country. We do not pay for its parking, a cost, which, if

added, would make us think twice before we bought or drove our new

dream vehicle, whatever the variant.

 

As the Nano rolls out, think of how we subsidize the car and tax the

bus. Public buses pay taxes as commercial passenger vehicles, each

year and based on the number they carry. In many states, they pay over

12 times more tax than cars. Think of the public transport bus service

in your city and ask how much of its revenues go in taxes: half, in

most cases. Think also that the same Tata company, that has managed to

roll out the car of our dreams in record time, does not possess the

capacity to build the buses cities need.

 

Such an old-economy approach becomes completely perverse when one

considers that already today, and definitely tomorrow, the greater

proportion of people who are or will commute are using and will

continue to use public transport - a bus or a train. Today, as much as

half of rich Delhi takes a bus, and another one-third walk or cycle

because it is too poor to even take the bus.

 

Think again about the car inequity in India - 7 per 1000 people. Can

the government write off the costs - Nano style - so that all can buy

the car? Can the government pay for our parking, our roads and our

fuel, so that all can drive the car? If not, then is this the right

right at all?

 

The issue, then, is not the right to own a Nano. The issue is the

right to a slice of the public subsidy so that everybody has the right

to mobility. There is no other right.

 

Read this editorial online: http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1

To comment, write to cse

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Also

Watch video to find out who wins in the race to emit more

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In -depth: Urban transport - Cities need mobility, not cars

http://indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/indepth/term/2005

 

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" Those who have the privilege to know, have the duty to act. " Albert Einstein

 

Dr.V.N.Sharma

http://canvas.nowpos.com/vnsharma