Specially Thanks for TATA which understand all middle class people thoughts and hope that TATA NANO will manufacture better model.

Thank you very much.

Tek Rawal / Nepal

The Rise of the Car Nazis:
Ratan and the Tata Wannabes
Chithra Karunakaran, Feb 09, 2008

Ratan Tata has made an illegal Left turn in a no-car zone. The Nano is a no-no. Bad for India, Bad for the developing world. bad for the poor.

If the Nano is manufactured this basically lets Government off the hook. They will not need to commit funds to mass transit in cities,towns and rural areas.

Can industry-hungry West Bengal help to rethink the Nano 'personal car' project and instead develop into a manufacturing hub for MASS PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION? Do we need more cars OR more and better public use transport -- buses, subway trains, rail? With the proposed launch of the Nano car, every central and local government in the developing world is off the hook -- they will no longer have to commit political will and infrastructure funds to provide public mass transit. A cheap car? Cheap for the environment?

The people of India and I am one of them, do NOT need a mis-named people's car. We need a People's Bus, A People's Mass Transit, a vastly expanded People's Railway, we need PUBLIC MASS TRANSPORTATION that is ecologically sustainable and delivers a public convenience that meets the needs of our underserved Indian URBAN AND RURAL masses and is the envy of, and a model for, the entire world. I proudly count myself among these masses, even though I teach in the US and live and work in India only about six months of the year.

Q.Why did Ratan Tata and the Tata Group choose to put their wholly admirable "frugal engineering" expertise into a private car and not into making buses and mass transportation vehicles? A.Corporate greed and personal ambition.

The Tata Group has decades of engineering knowhow in the heavy truck sector. Why didn't they build on this experience and come out with buses and other mass transport innovations? Again the answer is corporate greed and selfish personal ambition. Ratan Tata has absolutely no stake in the Greater Collective Good (GCG). Tata is all about profit. Tata is all about a narrow self-serving short term view in which he and Tata Group can make a quick buck and now unfortunately the India Govt. has awarded Ratan a Padma Vibhushan. That PV should have gone to Medha Patkar the Narmada Bachao Andolan actvism pioneer and she would have probably declined it. She would be right to do so. No point accepting a Padma Vibhushan from a Govt. that is committed to predatory capitalism against its own people.There are only a handful of folks like Patkar, Arundhati Roy, Anna Hazare, P. Sainath and a few others who cannot be bought and sold by corporate interests and criminalized politicians.

What many Indians (especially the avidly consuming, politically apathetic and ethically indefensible middle class in India) fail to appreciate is that a fabulous city like New York where I live about six months a year is heavily invested in mass public transportation. NYC has been heavily invested in mass transit for over half a century.

I don't own a car either in the U.S. or India. And I don't plan to own one, certainly not the Nano. I walk. It's smart not to be an obesity stat. I ride the buses and trains in India and I am proud to say that I adamantly refuse to ride in a car in India.

In New York, I do have a bicycle. Tens of thousands like me in New York ride our magnificent, er often tardy and continually underfunded subways of the NYC Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). I can get all around town and all the outer boros and to JFK airport for $2 and then I am happy to pay another $5 to get me on the public mass transportation called the AirTrain right into the airport terminals. We ordinary folks (mainly the middleclass and the aspiring middleclass of New York City) fought long and hard at public hearings and through legislative lobbying, for the funding of mass transit in preference to car-choked highways -- and we got it. We didn't get everything we wanted but there's always a next time at a public hearing or a court testimony.That's participatory democracy.

Even our Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg rides the subway everyday to work. It's a great feeling to get on a train that runs under New York and to know that we are contributing zero pollution to our wonderful city. That is precisely what we need in India. NOT crazy Ratan ("I have no watan") Tata and his no-no Nano.

Let's get real. India cannot afford to manufacture and dispose a paper cup, let alone produce yet another private car. We should not be following the U.S. model of predatory capitalism. The U.S. model of endless consumption is ecologically unsustainable. It is emphatically not the model for India.

Both the centre and the states in India must urgently invest in public mass transit which they have criminally neglected and disproportionately taxed.

The Nano represents a vivid test case for our civil society and the need for urgent development of a Critical Environmental Studies in schools and colleges to research such complex issues. I have presented the above ideas in India during conferences on Environmental Sustainability and will not rest until such proposals gain policy implementation.

The Gandhian post-revolutionary democratic Indian nation-state deserves a lofty vision, mission and policies that affirm the public trust. Public mass transportation that is ecologically sustainable is part of that noble public trust.

Note: in a subsequent blog I have cut and pasted all or nearly all of Tata's own comments ("From the Chairman's Desk") on the Nano.

Let the reader perform her/his own critical analysis of whether the Nano serves the Greater Collective Good (GCG).

Dr. Chithra KarunaKaran
City University of New York (CUNY)
http://www.ethicaldemocracy.blogspot.com

This is an incredible breakthrough for a significant proportion of the population, which in the past has been denied to them by the self-interest of the commercial motor vehicle manufacturers. It is truly innovative, just in terms of cost, let alone anything else.

End Quote...

Well said...I agree...and they should have some fun with it...http://www.trickmytata.com

Think of the Tata Nano as a motor scooter with a roof.

Otherwise, just let the brown people ride their motor scooters with Mum on the back, the eldest son straddling the front wheel, and the daughter balancing on the rear mudguard.

Seriously, have you ever been to India?

This is an incredible breakthrough for a significant proportion of the population, which in the past has been denied to them by the self-interest of the commercial motor vehicle manufacturers. It is truly innovative, just in terms of cost, let alone anything else.

i disagree if this car is for villages just beacuse its cheap ..
the idea is still not comunicated
.. we cannot use the microscope to study stars and galaxies

be a part!!! not break apart ...!!

(In other words it threatens Ford GM and Chrysler, manufacturers who have been producing vehicles of this sort of quality for some time now.)

I wonder if you buy two and donate one to a poor person in a third world country, will you be allowed to keep the other one? How bright is the screen? After you crank it for five minutes, how long does it run?

Care to expound upon why the greens or lefties don't have a problem with brown people?

The unmentionable Malthusian approach, particularly in the green camp, is patently obvious, and I would be interested in hearing an intelligent contrary viewpoint.

Not vacuous ad hominem.

THE WEST BLOODY INVENTED EVERYTHING.

And now the west is the first to twig that something needs to be done about the emmisions, impending environmental catastrophe etc.

The thing is , it's not like kids playing on swing, we don't all have to get equal shots on the swing.

Thems are the breaks, the 3rd world either drums it's heels on the ground and insists it will have an oldsmobile OR it acts now and doesn't drown.

NOt both.

not fair, but anyone who excpected to it to be fair would be a fool.

Got me stuffed why the down-trodden poor always have to be down-trodden and poor - it's a bit like the greens/lefties/watermelons just don't like uppity brown people!

Bravo for an ingenious indigenous solution to a mobility problem (TOTAL lack of safety on overloaded, underpowered motorcycles).

Infrastructure, gridlock and overcrowding, now there's a First World problem to solve.