August 2008 Edition
40 paise a km, no pollution, no dents
Umesh Anand
New Delhi
It seemed like just another showroom about to open in the Lajpat Nagar Market in south Delhi. But when the wraps came off, its bright orange and yellow décor set it apart from a sea of conventional shop fronts. And then, lo and behold, a small, exotic electric car went on display. What was this oddity? Middle-class families out shopping stopped to check it out. Kids scrambled to get behind the wheel. Some mums did likewise, no doubt eager to break free. Dads asked about the price and tried to figure out the technology.
Only 40 paise a kilometre running cost? Amazing! Just plug it into a socket and charge it? Really, is it that simple? No clutch, no maintenance, no pollution? Delhi is a city so crazy about cars that it puts some 270,000 new ones on its streets each year. In Lajpat Nagar you will find hardcore worshippers of combustion engines. There are families that own two and three cars with a scooter and a motorcycle thrown in for good measure.
It is here that the Reva, the world’s most popular electric car, has finally made a full-fledged debut in its flamboyant colours. The Reva has at least a thousand takers in London and is getting noticed and picked up in other environmentally conscious cities of Europe where it has been test marketed.
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Vivek S Ghatani
Darjeeling
Twenty years ago the agitation for a hill state of Gorkhaland, carved out of West Bengal, was given a quiet burial. The movement has now revived and spread like wildfire in the Darjeeling region. The leaders of the revived movement are asking for identity and development. They are seeking investment, jobs, education facilities and protection of the environment. In yet another departure from the agitation of 1986-88, the current leaders have pledged themselves to non-violence and Gandhian methods.
Under Subhas Ghising and his Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) the movement was bloody and violent. It engulfed Darjeeling for 28 months and then ended rather tamely. On August 22, 1988, Subhas Ghising signed an agreement with the government of West Bengal and the Centre. Instead of statehood, GNLF settled for an autonomous self governing body called the Darjeeling Gorkha Hill Council (DGHC), established under a statute. The council did not have any constitutional guarantee, say critics.
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Rahul Bajaj says the customer comes first
Civil Society News
New Delhi
For years together, Bajaj Auto had a monopoly on the Indian market and produced polluting, clumsily shaped two-wheelers based on outdated technology. People had to join long waiting lists to own these ugly blobs of metal. Such was the choice before the hapless Indian consumer that the Bajaj scooter would even be given in dowry! Liberalisation has changed all that. Bajaj Auto can no longer afford to be complacent because competition has loosened its stranglehold.
Even more significant is the kind of evolution that has taken place in the leadership of the company. Rahul Bajaj, chairman of Bajaj Auto and one of India’s most candid industrialists, admits that finally consumers force companies to improve and deliver better products. As the bar goes up so does the standard of products because a company that doesn’t provide quality products and services at an affordable price does not have a reason to exist. Bajaj should know. His company has been forced to innovate with design and technology and upgrade its vehicles several times over what they were 15 years ago.
In a typically freewheeling interview to Civil Society in a deserted dining room of the India International Centre (IIC), with the odd waiter stretched out on the floor in a post- prandial stupor, Bajaj, now 75 but as always full of energy, spelt out what he considers to be responsible corporate behaviour.
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Umesh Anand
The Reva, India’s only commercially produced electric car, deserves much more attention in this country than it gets. It is for the second time that it is making an attempt to enter the Delhi market --- with the difference that it now has serious tax concessions from the state government.
The Reva is the product of a new brand of entrepreneurship. Chetan Maini has for the past decade has been a man ahead of his times. He has built a car that is not only a technological marvel, but also a social statement of our times.
People become fans of the Reva because it is such an amazing car to drive. It is so easy to handle and costs just 40 paise a kilometre to run. It has no emissions, no great maintenance costs and apart from being safe in crashes of any kind its body is made of material that takes a knock and springs back to normal. There are 1,000 Revas running in London for these very reasons.
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Riaz Quadir
Versailles
Five years ago in one of the first letters I wrote for this column, I had praised the creation of the EU as a political entity that sought to encompass a larger mass of humanity within its civic body and thereby extend its domestic egalitarian spirit to all those who were accepted within this brotherhood. The right to this brotherhood was - and still is, deeply rooted in the historical xenophobia based on race, colour and religion as Turkey has - much to its chagrin - discovered in recent years.
Even though declaring Christianity as a part of its official identity was bitterly contested by secular countries such as France, no one tries to mask that in reality it is indeed the case. Less naïve now, I am far more pessimistic about the unveiling of the Mediterranean Union (MU), the sly brainchild of the pathologically ambitious French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. It is a political scheme befitting Sarkozy.
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