Do We Need One Car Each?

Can the common man afford development?

Utopia rings bells of alarms, doesn't it? What's wrong here? What's the catch? Let's rack our brains and think a bit.

By Citizen Correspondent Gauri Gharpure

Date Posted: 01/25/08

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Industrialization? What are you talking about? O, do you mean industrialization as that situation wherein you confiscate a piece of fertile land and gift it to any XYZ company. The company will grow, so will the smoke, so will the population density in that area, and so will sprout a few measly tea stalls and bun stalls in a futile attempt. And when the roadside stalls sprout and when a few youths are employed as peons and a few young women are degraded to being sweepers and cleaners from being free-willed maidens who picked up green peas in their fields before the SEZ nightmare happened, of course, you will point your fingers wisely and say: "See, we told you, SEZs generate employment..."

There's good news. And I have already started taking my driving lessons. (It was highly incidental, but what a coincidence!) The newspaper reports say (and so gulp them with a pinch of salt) that the 'Nano'- the cheapest car in the world, will be priced around INR One lakh...

So while I was thinking to save up my money and go for a second hand dabba car within one lakh range sometime in six months, I now might as well wait another few months and add another few thousand and get a brand new Nano.

Makes perfect economic sense, nai? So it will, for many others like me. And so in a year from now, we all will be happily hopping to TATA showrooms like we now hop to Big Bazaar and get ourselves a car each for a change instead of a t-shirt or a jeans or steel vessel. I am thrilled, I am swooning in disbelief...

Utopia rings bells of alarms, doesn't it? What's wrong here? What's the catch? Let's rack our brains and think a bit.

Kudos to the Tatas to make a car within the reach of the "common man". Kudos to the very communist government for putting a step forward to usher in 'development' and 'industrialization'.

Okay, hold on. I am going to explain the quote-unquote thing.

"Common man." Whom are you talking about? Surely not he, who spends most of his time traveling in a bus or a metro. Not he, who gets fascinated and starry-eyed on being offered a credit card. Surely not he, who sweats each day on his way to office, sweats back all his way, and then haggles over the price of tomatoes somewhere in between.