The Tata Nano

A new "people's car," for a new era. India's Tata Motors unveiled the world's "cheapest car." From the NYT's automotive blog:

Over the past year, Tata has been building hype for a car that would cost a mere 100,000 rupees (roughly $2,500) and bring automotive transportation to the mainstream Indian population. It has been nicknamed the “People’s Car.” Over the course of the New Delhi Auto Expo, which began this week, anticipation had grown to fever pitch.

With the theme from “2001: A Space Odyssey” playing, Ratan Tata, chairman of Tata Motors drove the small white bubble car onto Tata’s show stage, where it joined two others.

“They are not concept cars, they are not prototypes,” Mr. Tata announced when he got out of the car. “They are the production cars that will roll out of the Singur plant later this year.”

The four-door Nano is a little over 10 feet long and nearly 5 feet wide. It is powered by a 623cc two-cylinder engine at the back of the car. With 33 horsepower, the Nano is capable of 65 miles an hour. Its four small wheels are at the absolute corners of the car to improve handling. There is a small trunk, big enough for a duffel bag.

“Today, we indeed have a People’s Car, which is affordable and yet built to meet safety requirements and emission norms, to be fuel efficient and low on emissions,” Mr. Tata added. “We are happy to present the People’s Car to India and we hope it brings the joy, pride and utility of owning a car to many families who need personal mobility.

What is exciting about this? First, that an Indian company (albeit a massive conglomerate) has developed a solution for the needs of the Indian market, in terms of cost, features, and fit to the physically crowded Indian urban landscape. Second, the opportunity for increased mobility that this provides the expanding middle class in India. The introduction of the automobile to the middle class fundamentally changed American culture. What will be the impact in India? Third, the commitment (if Tata's claims are true) to building a vehicle which takes environmental and basic safety concerns into consideration, not just cost:

"the 33hp engine meets current Euro 4 emissions standards and is cleaner than most of the scooters running around on Indian streets right now.” They also claim that the Nano can achieve 54 mpg (U.S.) and has passed frontal and side impact tests"

What is worrying about this? I make the assumption that, with or without this vehicle, there would be an explosion of personal-use vehicles by the rapidly expanding (in number and wealth) middle class in India. Still, the prospect of another million vehicles on the Indian roadways is deeply concerning -- for the local environment, in terms of smog and congestion, for the global environment, in terms of climate change and other atmospheric emissions, for public safety, of both the drivers of these tiny little death traps, and the massive number of Indian urbanites who use other means of transportation (pedestrians, bicyclists, rickshaws, auto-rickshaws, scooters, motorcycles) on Indian city streets, and to the political will that Indian governments will have to building public transportation infrastructure at the expense of more roads, widened roads, and highways. Perhaps not quite the head-on collision of anti-poverty versus environment that Slate suggests, but some interesting dilemmas will arrive if the Tata Nano takes off. And I bet it will.

Blogbharti

Two topics of long abiding interest relating to India, which I may explore in greater depth in 2008:

1) Why does there not seem to be a counter-culture in India? Or, specifically, why isn't there a purely cultural counter-culture, a sex/drugs/rock 'n roll/art/fashion counter-culture, whose purpose it is to strike a pose of rebellion? This may seem like a ridiculous statement, but in my limited but not irrelevant experience with India, this seems to be true. There are deeply politicized "counter-culture" movements, steeped in issues as varied as sexuality and gender, to poverty and anti-globalization activism, to regional heritage. But, unlike Latin America, or Eastern Europe, or China, or Japan, or even to some extend, West Africa, in India, there hasn't been an abiding embrace of the global counter-culture (most keenly felt in art, music, and movies) that has maintained a long and evolving monopoly on "cool" (and, therefore, deeply influenced the shape of both mainstream cultural and consumer trends) since the end of WWII.
Why?

2) The emergence of a new, influential class of people in the world has been surprising well documented in the media in the U.S. This class of people is the young, independent, technologically-adept, status-savvy young Indian professionals who are in the ascendant in Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and on and on. Much richer than their parents ever were, aware (through cousins, travel, and television) of Western style, luxury, and mores, independent and increasingly feeling entitled, the notion that this class will be influential in the next 50 years, and that their influence will be felt globally, has been asserted. What they care about (beyond professional success and status) and how they will exercise their influence is much less certain -- and again, in my experience, the political and social agendas (beyond, simply, success) of these, my counterparts in India, has been underdeveloped. For a middle class that ranks 250 million strong, their values, politics, and engagement will be crucial in positively or negatively influencing issues like poverty alleviation, environmental sustainability, and public health, both within India, and, since India accounts for a billion people, globally.

I raise both of these issues partly to set the table for further investigation on my part, and partly because, until recently, I have found very few avenues for sounding out these issues. But a new website, www.blogbharti.com, holds the promise of being a locus for opinions from young Indians and non-resident Indians (NRIs), and warrants a few looks...

Who would've imagined, twenty years ago, that a thing called "the Indian blogosphere" would exist? Who knows, twenty years from now, what the relevance of that set of people might be ~ on global politics, on consumer trends, on innovation... that's where I'm going with this!

Proposed Antilia Building: More Green? Still Ostentatious

I recently learned about the Antilia building, which is under construction in Mumbai, by Perkins + Will, for Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani. A couple of descriptive paragraphs:

Construction is underway, albeit with some delays, on one of India’s highest profile and most opulent projects—the Antilia, a 490-foot-tall corporate meeting facility and private residence in Mumbai. Chicago-based Perkins + Will designed the 24-story tower for business tycoon Mukesh Ambani, whose family will occupy roughly 35,000 square feet in its top floors.

Among its interesting elements, Antilia will feature a band of vertical and horizontal gardens that demarcates the tower’s different program elements. A garden level will separate the ground-floor parking and conference center from residential space above, for instance, and the outer walls on certain levels will be sheltered by trellises supporting panels that contain hydroponically grown plants.

In addition to signaling different space uses and providing privacy, these “vertical gardens” will help shade the building and reduce the urban heat island effect. “You can use the whole wall almost like a tree and increase the green area of the site by five or 10 times over what it would be if you just did a green roof,” Johnson observers. “It’s a prototype for buildings of the future.”

Oh, wow. What a crazy building, and while some of the architectural and green design aspects are interesting, it is difficult to see how this building either fits in with the development needs of Mumbai, in general, or a commitment to green design. I guess the rich get what they want, although if this building is a prototype for the future, it seems we're moving ever-closer to a Blader Runner-like dystopia, where the rich live comfortable lives in high-rises towering above the city floor, while discharging a disproportionate amount of waste to and depleting resources from those stuck on the ground, in the shadows below.

The Slate.com article which brought this building to my attention is interesting, as well, in dissecting how efforts to create standards for certifying green building design (specifically, the LEED certification standards) can be counter-productive for really achieving green design objectives. The main criticisms seem to be that LEED's check-list based system for evaluating building design give similar weight to disproportionate investments in green design, creating mis-aligned incentives, that the checklist oversimplifies many of the design objectives and fails to create baseline standards, and that the premium is placed on achieving efficiency and not on controlling scale.

I haven't really paid attention to the evolution of LEED in ten years, but the criticisms seem like pretty standard fare for most initiatives trying to bring standards for sustainability into commercially-driven enterprises. I don't disagree with any of Daniel Brook's analysis of LEED (to the extent that I am familiar with the standards and qualified to agree or disagree), but also it bears mention how difficult it is to create initiatives that both achieve sustainable objectives and will gain buy-in from the companies that need to be properly incentivized and to implement designs and programs according to those standards. Not an excuse, just highlighting the ongoing design challenge that people serious about sustainability will continue to face.

Chak De India

If I had seen Chak De India, starring Shah Rukh Khan, in an American theater, with an American context, I would have walked out. Structured somewhere between The Mighty Ducks and Miracle, Chake De India relates the story of a disgraced, Muslim ex-captain of the Indian men's field hockey team (who is disgraced for allegedly throwing a World Cup championship game to Pakistan), who returns after eight years in exile to coach the under-funded and under-appreciated women's field hockey team as they attempt to compete in their own World Cup in Australia. Predictably, the women's field hockey team is comprised of a motley cast of characters - the jaded veteran, the strong, mean, fat girl, the brawling defenders, super-talented, aloof rich girl, the hard-luck, scrappy forward. What makes this film interesting is that, beyond embodying these sports film archetypes, each of these girls also represents a regional stereotype from within India. And one of the film's strongest motifs/morals is that, in order to succeed, each of the women must learn to play for India, and their unified identity as the Indian national team, rather than the regional identities which they more strongly identify with.

I write about this film not to recommend it. It's not a good movie. But it is interesting as an example of how social mores, even simple ones, can be advanced through film. Since, in India, film and television are such popular media, dominating so much of the popular cultural landscape, film and television become important conduits for conveying political and cultural messages. By embracing an essentially feel-good, nationalist story, starring one of the biggest stars of them all, Chak De India is able to broach questions of regionalism (particularly against the poorer and more backwards states), bureaucratic inefficiency, Hindu-Muslim prejudice, and sexism. All in one movie! All while India's women's field hockey team improbably wins the world championship! With the climactic scene, where the young women overcome their differences and recognize that they are more alike than dissimilar, taking place in a McDonald's!

Is such a movie successful in changing people's opinions about India? It isn't a particularly insightful or subtle treatment, but I'm not sure insightful and subtle are the ways to sway popular opinion in India. And, of course, it's hard for me to tell, sitting in New York.

India: The Coming Malaise?

Victoria Station in Mumbai

Over dinner in Kolkata last January with my parents and a professor friend of theirs, a fact was casually dropped that was actually quite stunning: the size of India's middle class ranks 200+ million strong, and growing. To put it in context, that is about two-thirds the population of the United States and just less than half the size of the EU. And while this middle class may not be quite as rich as their Western counterparts, their parity in purchasing power is not quite as far a cry as it was even twenty years ago. To paint a picture, a middle class in India may not own a free-standing house, two cars, and a computer, but they are likely to have a scooter, a TV, and a cell phone.

In terms of access to media and connection with global cultural references, they are quickly and noisily arriving at the same status as their global peers. In terms of material possessions, they may be lagging, although given the population density of India (and since most of these middle class are urban-dwellers), their net impact, both positive on the economy, and negative on the environment, are within the realm of comparison to their peers, at a local scale (of course, in terms of global impact, nobody can touch us Americans...) And when you consider the potential for upward mobility, the sky is the limit.

Consider this framing paragraph from a recent article in Prospect magazine:

As the actual Mother India celebrates the 60th anniversary of her independence, there is—as in Jaya Mary's life—both surging optimism and crushing despair about her future. As the saying goes, everything and its opposite is true in India. The seven Indian Institutes of Technology rank near the top of global surveys, and job offers to graduates from the Indian Institutes of Management rival those to graduates of the famous US business schools; yet a third of the country is still illiterate. Three hundred million Indians live on less than $1 a day—a quarter of the world's utterly poor—yet since 1985, more than 400m (out of a total population of 1bn) have risen out of relative poverty—to $5 a day—and another 300m will follow over the next two decades if the economy continues to grow at over 7 per cent a year. Population growth, even at a slower pace, will mean that there will still be millions below the poverty line, but the fall in number will be steady. At the other end of the scale, India has the largest number of dollar billionaires outside the US and Russia.

While this is both a true and somewhat poetic discussion of the poles that characterize modern Indian society, the article is not interesting in its celebration of India's diversity, or in its praise of the rise of India's middle class. Rather, what draws my attention, and a thesis to which I subscribe through limited personal experience, is that as India's middle class grows richer, and just plain grows, it fails to become a politically conscious or engaged class. Rather than assume the mantle of leadership to tackle the nation's myriad ills, members of the middle class become concerned with consolidating their gains, exercising the benefits of their new status and wealth, and persevering forward on their personal and family journeys to wealth.

From the article:

Among the middle class, in much of the media, in the malls and airports, in houses (however small) with water and electricity, there is still a commitment to an India which plays a decisive role on the international stage—but now, instead of through "non-aligned" solidarity and ancient history, it is through software and finance. Ten years after the buzz caused by the nuclear tests, the middle classes take India's new status for granted; they simply assume it is India's due to be treated as the "equal" of the US and the rest, and move on to talk of economic opportunities. This commitment to their own idea of India and their central role in its economic rise makes the middle classes sure of themselves. But at the same time, their sense of citizenship is weak: they do not, on the whole, extend a sense of solidarity to the poor; they often do not acknowledge the role of the state in their own rise or its capacity to solve any of the country's problems; and they are, in general, politically apathetic.

What explains this introversion? Middle classes at all stages of development, whether in 19th-century Europe or now, distrust those who have not risen with them. Yet in more homogeneous societies, the better off are more likely to care for the worse off. Highly diverse societies, like India, find it more difficult to institutionalise such fellow feeling.

The key to the diversity of Indian society is the jati system—intermarrying among consanguineous groups with hereditary (if often notional) occupations. But these groups are also placed within the ancient hierarchy of the varna, or "caste," system—the fivefold division of society on the axis of ritual purity from priests to warriors to merchants to labourers to those beyond the possibility of purity and therefore untouchable. Over the centuries, there have been many efforts to extend a sense of common humanity across castes. The caste system has also allowed for unparalleled pluralism of belief and practice; according to the logic of purity, the Brahmin priest has no control over practices beyond his realm, making for a thrilling diversity of temples, festivals and deities. Nonetheless, the varna concept that people are intrinsically pure or impure has blighted the idea of citizenship on the subcontinent. And while the 1950 Indian constitution sought to end such division (which the British had exploited), caste sentiment still drives rural violence and the separation of privileged groups.

The social distance of caste is echoed in religious difference—above all in the existence of a large Muslim minority which makes India the largest Muslim country in the world after Indonesia. While some hostile Hindus still question the Indianness of Muslims, the middle class contains about the same percentage of Muslims as does the population as a whole: about 13 per cent. (Caste distinctions that combine older Hindu divisions with newer Islamic social stratification prevail in Indian Islam, and middle-class Muslims tend to come from the traditional ashraf or "noble" sections of Muslim society.) But despite—or because of—constitutional guarantees of special rights for Muslims, there is a perennial worry over Muslim economic progress.

Aside from some extreme Hindu nationalists, I have never met a middle-class Indian who did not acknowledge the political equality of all Indians. The pride that middle-class Indians take in their democracy requires them to have an inclusive sense of Indianness, but not of citizenship. Middle-class Indians who feel little obligation to the poor tend to believe that they have made their contribution simply by becoming middle class. They focus on their own needs because they have overcome a great deal to get where they are and still fear slipping back. Moreover, they say, why give to the state when the money will just be wasted by corrupt politicians?

I would suggest reading the rest of the Prospect article, as it is interesting, and while I don't agree with all of its assertions, I think the core thesis has merit. Moreover, I think that the evolution of the Indian middle class (and true of China, as well) will be among the most influential factors in shaping the world we live in twenty years from now. And, as a word of caution against reading too much into the Prospect article, it is worth noting how young the Indian middle class is, both in terms of the relative brevity of the recent Indian economic expansion, dating to the early 1990s, and the age of the constituents of the class itself. Hardly a generation has elapsed, and perhaps it will be the call of the next generation of Indian middle class, those born into relative ease, to be more civic-minded, as this article in the New York Times suggests.

Happy 60th!

India celebrates 60 years of independence. Amazing how far she's come.

Read the New York Times article covering celebrations in India and an accompanying essay by the historian Ramchandra Guha reflecting on and warning of the 60 year old conflicts betwen the two twins, India and Pakistan

Photos from Flickr Most Interesting search for "India Independence 60"