[Reader-list] The world’s cheapest car?

[Vivek Narayanan]

I thought this earlier editorial by Sunita Narain (see below), might be 
relevant here.  I can't vouch absolutely for these facts and figures 
yet-- someone might help by citing data from an independent source, or 
the source of these figures-- but it makes a lot of sense.  The 
so-called buses we have now are apparently just a chassis of a truck 
with a bus body slapped on.  That's why one so often feels, on a city 
bus anywhere in India, that one is riding in an overgrown truck.

Relevant quote from the whole editorial reproduced below:

"There are only two real players in the market -- Tata Motors and Ashok 
Leyland. These companies do not make buses. They manufacture a truck 
chassis, on which various body builders assemble a bus body. As a 
result, when the city of Delhi or Ahmedabad places a tender for an urban 
bus, with improved design for comfort, it does not get many takers.

Then, when the city finally does place an order, the manufacturer cannot 
deliver buses in the quantity and speed required. Delhi placed its first 
order for some 500 low-floor urban buses over a year ago. It is still 
waiting for all the buses to be delivered by Tata Motors. The company 
says it can manufacture only 100 units a month in its newly developed 
facility in Lucknow. Now Delhi has placed another order for over 2,500 
buses, this time dividing it between Tata and Leyland. Leyland says it 
will begin delivery some time next year and will also be able to 
manufacture only 100 units each month. Delhi adds 1,000 vehicles each 
day on to its roads. It desperately needs to overhaul its entire public 
transport system, now handled by individual operators. In this 
situation, it will need to order another 6,000-odd buses. But who will 
make them?"

Anyway my recurring nightmare lately is of a city jam-packed with 
hundreds of thousands nanos crawling into every available space, making 
it hard to breathe, and all of them saying in uneven chorus, like nasty 
and persistent alien creatures, in a nasal voice, "Nano nano nano.  Nano 
nano nano..."

AAAAAAAAAAAAAA
vivek

-------- Original Message --------
Subject:     [Urbanstudy] A complicated bus ride
Date:     Wed, 26 Nov 2008 19:35:40 -0800 (PST)
From:     lalitha kamath <elkamath at yahoo.com>
To:     urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, NURM list <jnnurm at yahoogroups.com>




Editorial: A complicated bus-ride (By Sunita Narain)

=============================
What does Barack Obama's election as president of the US have to do with 
buses in India? A lot. Obama stands for what he calls 'change' -- in the 
way we think and do business. But the call will remain rhetoric unless 
we translate it into practical, everyday life, changes. To do that, we 
must bring changes in our business model and, most importantly, in what 
is essential and what needs to be invested in.

What have we learnt about translating good ideas into hard realities? 
Anyone who lives in Indian cities and gets crushed under the weight of 
traffic and pollution will accept we need a massive transition to public 
transport. This is a win-win answer, almost as persuasive as saying 'we 
believe in change'.

Yet, the number of buses in our cities has gone down and not up. In 
1951, one of every 10 vehicles sold in India was a bus; today, out of 
every 100 vehicles sold, one bus makes it to roads. Last year, the 
automobile industry placed another feather in its cap by selling over 
1.5 million cars. In the same year, it sold only 38,000 buses. Not 
surprisingly, latest estimates by government-sponsored studies show that 
in spite of huge investment in flyovers and road expansive, driving 
speeds have come down in every Indian city. Let's not even talk about 
choking lungs.

This is only the beginning of the problem. For even if we want buses we 
cannot have them. Why? Because our rich automobile companies, busy 
churning out cars for congested cities, do not have the capacity to 
manufacture buses. There are only two real players in the market -- Tata 
Motors and Ashok Leyland. These companies do not make buses. They 
manufacture a truck chassis, on which various body builders assemble a 
bus body. As a result, when the city of Delhi or Ahmedabad places a 
tender for an urban bus, with improved design for comfort, it does not 
get many takers.

Then, when the city finally does place an order, the manufacturer cannot 
deliver buses in the quantity and speed required. Delhi placed its first 
order for some 500 low-floor urban buses over a year ago. It is still 
waiting for all the buses to be delivered by Tata Motors. The company 
says it can manufacture only 100 units a month in its newly developed 
facility in Lucknow. Now Delhi has placed another order for over 2,500 
buses, this time dividing it between Tata and Leyland. Leyland says it 
will begin delivery some time next year and will also be able to 
manufacture only 100 units each month. Delhi adds 1,000 vehicles each 
day on to its roads. It desperately needs to overhaul its entire public 
transport system, now handled by individual operators. In this 
situation, it will need to order another 6,000-odd buses. But who will 
make them?

For believers of a market-led economy, this question is a no-brainer. 
They will say if there is a demand for buses, manufacturers will crowd 
it. But this is precisely where we need to heed the call for change, 
Obama-style. We need to recognise the market needs a product that 
currently is outside the reach of consumers. The urban bus will cost 
more than current variants, because it requires components for comfort 
and convenience. Therefore, the challenge is to manufacture high-comfort 
but affordable buses-- a Nano-type solution. When Ahmedabad wanted to 
order the same-Delhi type buses, it found, to its horror, that bus 
companies quoted astronomical prices. It then had to settle for a 
standard diesel vehicle, tweaking its look with some creative bus 
body-building.

The bus market is not the car market, and that's the problem. The latter 
has been carefully developed by manufacturers and credit agencies. So, 
even as manufacturers push and peddle their ware, they do little to push 
a vehicle that could take millions to their destinations. The bus is the 
poor person's vehicle and nobody wants to do business in it, for buses 
will have to be driven by agencies that agree to take up the business of 
transporting people in cities. Currently, all our bus companies operate 
in the red. It is easy to dismiss this problem by calling it the curse 
of inefficient public sector utilities, and so completely miss the point.

The fact is even the most efficient modern bus service, in our poor 
cities, will cost more than the market can afford. Particularly if we 
want to get better buses on our roads, which means more capital 
investment. But even as we are willing to understand this affordability 
gap, when, say, it comes to subsidizing air travel, we refuse to do the 
same for buses. We will even subsidize cars, by charging them less road 
tax than a bus, or not charging them for their running cost. But we will 
never do this for buses.

The Union ministry of surface transport has itself calculated that the 
combined losses of the state-run public utilities -- it was Rs 2,000 
crore in 2004-05 -- would go down to less than Rs 900 crore if various 
Central and state taxes on bus companies were removed. It is, therefore, 
intentional policy that drives down this market. The policy is derived 
from an ideology that believes the market will fix everything, without 
considering how the market can be made to work where there is demand but 
less purchasing power or credit-worthiness.

Why does this happen in a country where the majority still takes a bus 
to work? Why is the voice of the majority neutered in our democracy? 
Maybe this is why we need, most of all, to understand Barack Obama's 
victory, where the people spoke for change. Maybe, change is in the air.

Read this editorial online >>
http://www.downtoearth.org.in/cover_nl.asp?mode=1
To comment, write to >> feedback at cseindia.org 
<mailto:feedback at cseindia.org>

siddharth sareen wrote:
> Actually, that particular point is a fairly true reflection of the real
> state of affairs. Tata and Ashok Leyland are the two major private players
> in the country who have any capacity whatsoever to build buses, but their
> plant capacity is severely limited and nowhere near the kind of numbers we'd
> need, especially if more BRT corridors are to come up and the quantities
> that would be a requisite for a paradigm shift in urban transport were to be
> demanded. The possibility has been explored in the past, but there's not
> much incentive for the companies to develop such capacity, as compared to
> faster delivery of more cars.
>
> Best
>
> On Wed, Apr 8, 2009 at 8:06 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>wrote:
>
>   
>> Dear Rahul
>>
>> NANO or no NANO, for many on this List, Gujrat, TATA and India are all
>> a NO-NO in which there cannot be any good aspects.
>>
>> What has surprised me though is that someone like Sunita Narain (otherwise
>> deserving of admiration) should say something as downright stupid and
>> ill-informed as :
>>
>> """""" 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. """"""
>>
>> In fact much of the tone and content of this piece by her makes me wonder
>> whether she is going the "BLOWBACK" Arundhati Roy way of display of abject
>> superficiality of intellect. That would be sad.
>>
>> Kshmendra
>>
>>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 4/8/09, Rahul Asthana <rahul_capri at yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>> From: Rahul Asthana <rahul_capri at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The world’s cheapest car?
>> To: "Sanjay Kak" <kaksanjay at gmail.com>, "Rakesh Iyer" <
>> rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
>> Cc: "Sarai Reader List" <reader-list at sarai.net>
>> Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 7:14 PM
>>
>> The writer doesn't take into account the intangibles accruing to
>> Gujarat,Tata and India from this project.
>>
>>
>> --- On Wed, 4/8/09, Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     
>>> From: Rakesh Iyer <rakesh.rnbdj at gmail.com>
>>> Subject: Re: [Reader-list] The world’s cheapest car?
>>> To: "Sanjay Kak" <kaksanjay at gmail.com>
>>> Cc: "Sarai Reader List" <reader-list at sarai.net>
>>> Date: Wednesday, April 8, 2009, 5:01 PM
>>> And instead of criticizing such subsidies, we have people
>>> who instead
>>> justify Modi's far-sightedness in bringing about
>>> industrial
>>> development to Gujarat. A very important article, and I
>>> feel not only
>>> this, but other kinds of data regarding pollution need to
>>> be brought
>>> in, so also the deteriorating effects these private
>>> vehicles are
>>> having on our health system.
>>>
>>> It would have been better had the Gujarat government had
>>> instead
>>> subsidized some public vehicle making plant, as that would
>>> have
>>> benefited all. Instead our governments are ready to do what
>>> the US
>>> govt generally does, bend down to the corporates. The day
>>> we all lose
>>> our money like this, probably doles would be given to
>>> people without
>>> guarantee to continue this capitalist system. And we will
>>> go down the
>>> drain sooner or later like the US has if we continue with
>>> this.
>>> ________