Desicritics Comments on The Tata Nano: The Second Coming or Satan's Car?

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Comment by somo

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:33:21 EST

well let me first say u do write well. but being the spokesperson for greenpeace during the launch of our fuel efficiency demand i have to say u got the facts wrong. point one - the greenpeace demonstration was for mandatory fuel efficiency and not against the tata nano. the greenpeace position for the tata nano is " the car is a boon if it replaces gas guzzlers in the market. otherwise the nano is a bane. regards soumyabrata rahut climate and energy expert greenpeace india +91 98455 35403

Comment by amrood

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:47:31 EST

What on earth is going on here.

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 17:37:48 EST

Sanjay, Mark is a wave of foreign missionaries to enter India who are on an Intellectual Charity mission. Like the xtian missionaries out here, scumbags like Mark think that we are intellectually poor, and that is the reason why we are economically poor. intellectual charity operates much the same way as xtian missionaries do. There was one missionary who said that India is a land with 900 million people living in darkness. He too was in "LOVE" with india. Compare that with Marks statement that 1.1 billion indians have third rate imagination. It is evident from Mark's statements that he does not think an Indian is capable of rational planning or rational thought, and thats the reason why i called him a what he is,a condescending racist generalizer. Deep within Mark or any other charity org. is a love for a lesser people, a lesser being that is incapable of giving direction to itself. And has to be guided like you guide a blind man to cross the road. In Marks ethics you do a great service by forgetting your own priorities and guiding a person with poor vision to cross the road. Thats any charities definition of help. Now Mark set out to India after renouncing a million dollar job (i think he must have been a football player :) ) and his rolce royce car, is a proof of his sacrifice and that in itself, gives him the right to guide the intellectually poor Indians to realize their actual potential. Typical of a racist, condescending missionary. Not only that we do not need people like Mark to begin with. Our nation gave birth to people who brought the green revolution to india, it gave birth to ambani, ghanshyamdas birla, JRD Tata and 100s of other revolutionary thinkers who would Mark look like a small ant in the Jungle of Intellectuals. It is for this reason that i ask that communist to go back to his country and if possible die quietly. Because if he tries his intellectual charity gimmick in the US, he would have his nuts roasted on a barbecue. Its a pity that we have idiots who think whatever a foreigner says is right, who lick the foreigners ass no matter what he says and be blind to the obvious condescending remarks that he makes. That more than anything else should be removed from the brains of Indians. India's problem is lack of self sense, if there was such a thing.. people like Mark would not have even been able to operate their draconian mission in India.

Comment by Sanjay

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 15:09:44 EST

I second that.

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:30:36 EST

You may have the last, red-baiting word. I'm bowing out. Mark.. please get out of India too, it would be probably the greatest service you would ever do to us third raters.

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 14:14:37 EST

Sujai: I guess we have something like 5 Engineering degrees between the both of us, probably not as much as the seven figure income that Mark renounced but still good enough to judge albeit in a third rate way. From what i read and know about auto engineering, a small car at that cost would take a lot of innovation in the following fronts: 1) Pure Technology development-- this is to develop the components that would go into this car that would make it damn cheap and operational based on some standards. 2) Technology configuration -- this is to get access to technology and configure larger units so that they perform within the design requirements.. quite a lot of innovation goes on in this area, and quite a lot of patents are generated as a result. 3) Product configuration -- this is to get technology modules work together as a complete product.. quite a lot of innovation here too. From what i know of the car (1) and (2) were partly sourced from other countries (this statement would keep Mark excited and happy) but most of it is TATAs own. Including the Requirements and the Design, which is more important to a product than pure technology. If you look at the investment pattern of any industry you would find the same pattern. A lot of money goes into figuring out the product requirements and design parameters. Somewhat lesser amount goes into technology confguration. Still somewhat lesser goes into universities as funds to develop pure technology. Now coming to Mark's statement that there is no "Real" innovation here.. you must know that Mark is here with a mission to teach us third raters on how to live and develop. Now any technology that goes against his philosophy is not a "real" innovation, any technology that supports his philosophy is "great" innovation. Let him try this BS in the US first and then come to us in his arm chair to tell us what to do.

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:34:26 EST

Mark: No sustainable development has happened in human history without rational selfishness. Socialism, any form of it, destroys rational selfishness and it manifests into irrational selfishness, then you have peoeple like stalin who would kill in order for his selfish motive of control Please find a counter example where something that suppresses rational selfishness has been used for pure positive development with no side effects, so that this third rater can learn from you--O first rate God :) Now the only way i can see India doing better is by better quality of education, better access to education and of course trying to find scientific means for developing alternate energy, add an honest media to it and you have a great country. If thats what you want us third-raters to understand then many of us knew it before u set foot on our under-privileged land. And there are a lot of people out here who are looking for that opportunity. I dont think we need your seven-figure first rate arm-chair-general services to figure out our bearings:) And regarding the fact that we are not a big engineering power.. refer to what amrita has said above.. we have some 20 years of history as far as engineering education goes. Compared to an average of 200 years in every other "developed" country, wait and watch in your arm chair sir. Refer to Sujais post before, it says how technology was managed, technology management comes before pure technology development. you know why? because you manage a technology to create a finished product no matter where the technology comes from. This is the first step to pure technology development. Guess what, just by managing the technology here TATA and others has filed 30 odd patents. Well we third raters can manage and innovate so far. I am sure TATA would be looking into alternative energy area. I am already aware of a tie up with ISRO to provide hydrogen fuel cells into a small car, that would have Nano's shape. But you would doubt that.. rite.. after all what can we stupid third rate country with a fourth rate imagination do? Amrita: I always wondered why indians are soo respectful of such foreign arm-chair generals who go about telling us what to do. Why dont these people go back to their countries and die quietly??? Especially when someone had to give up a seven figure income and a rolce royce to move to india, what does that measure? it can measure stupidity, or it can measure what i call the "Che-Guerra" factor. Also Mark the first rater gets a lot of pleasure in telling us that he was a seven figure income guy with a rolce royce who gave all of that up to serve our poor fourth rate imagination by being an arm-chair general out here and constantly reminding us from the love that flows out of his ass that we have a third rate imagination. What an condescending idiot!

Comment by Sanjay

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:27:09 EST

Again, Deepti arbitrarily deleting posts which don't conform to her political views. You can't be a moderator and a partisan at the same time. Clearly an unethical policy.

Comment by Sujai

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:16:49 EST

#54, Mark: I do not "discount the power of innovation"; I fail to see true innovation in this instance. I do not discount "the power of the consumer market"; I think that awesome power can be both pernicious and made to do the bidding of those doing the marketing, rather than service the collective good of society. I am not sure why you say there is no true innovation in this instance. Is it because it is the cheapest car? I believe there and know that there is innovation when you try to make something the cheapest. This is what I wrote in this context: It is no ordinary feat! Making the cheapest car is not about being cheap. When you have a car that does everything what others do but yet is very cheap, it is an engineering and business marvel. While making it, one has to go back to the drawing board and relook at every strategy that you knew about car making and then ask yourself, 'Is there a cheaper way of doing it, and yet retaining its function?' It's an ideology that you have to embrace in your thinking – in business and engineering. Maruti-Suzuki, the biggest car seller in India, conceded that they cannot put together a car for Rs. 1 Lakh, and went onto add that it's an impossible task. Tata has put together 32 patents while making this Nano.

Comment by Amrita

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 12:56:04 EST

Wow, okay so this discussion took a life of its own, huh? Ledzius and Lakshmikanth - climate change is a fact of life and unfortunately the climate doesnt particularly care whose emission levels are higher or whose history is what or whether XYZ is a hypocrite: they affect everyone equally. I agree with Mark that India has a genuine chance here to get ahead of the curve. As this century goes on, fossil fuels will continue to get more and more expensive and sooner or later it's going to get scarce. And eventually someone or the other is going to find an alternative source for fuel. This will not only be a necessity and a life-saving one at that - but it's an opportunity to cash in. Plus you'll get to lord it over everyone else in the high moral ground stakes if that sort of thing excites you. [You=general, not you specifically] Opprtunities like these are rare and if more companies like Tata, with their kind of resources, tried to develop a cheap hybrid or even an alternatively fueled car, they'll be sitting on a goldmine. Mark is also correct when he says that this is not a 100% Indian built car. Bosch is just one of the many companies that have contributed to its making. And this is no way a slap on Tata - I can't think of a single carmaker today who sources every bit of their car from one country. In America, ironically, Toyota is the carmaker that utilizes the most number of American-made parts. So where you guys see offense, I see opportunity. Had I been a scientist or had Tata amounts of moolah, I'd have been putting up camp at R&D. Mark - you can't tick other people off for boorish behavior when you go around making boorish comments. By your own admission, your post was "deliberately provocative". I'll accept your word that your intentions were of the best but this is a country that's had to suffer 200+ years of other people telling it what to do for its own good, so deliberate provocation isn't about to get your message across, good intentions or not. In terms of recent history, all Indians heard for 50 years was "Indians are commies and they should open up their market". Finally we broke down and did and now all we hear is, "The Indians are coming and they're entering our market". So there's a reason why people like Ledzius and Lakshmikanth get mad. Chandra - thank you :) and thats why it's called climate change instead of the old global warming. Sujai - read that para again. You'll blush :) Atlantean - people arent embarrassed to buy bicycles so why should they be embarrassed to buy the Nano? Plus, it all depends on the marketing - with a little bit of positioning, they can change this from "cheap" to "trendy" for kids with cash or people who're buying their first car or need a second city car. Thats why we have variants. Everybody - thank you for reading

Comment by Mark

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 03:37:22 EST

Lakshmikanth: You are boorish and offensive, but you raise just enough of interest (albeit knocking down straw-men of your own creation)to keep the discussion going. Sure, Marx was concerned with creating a structure to benefit the common social good. But so is Wall Street. Both Marxists and free marketeers think they have the answer. The communists were easily proven wrong by their tragic, badly failed social experiments. The problem is, most capitalists see only the good in their system and cannot abide any discussion of the problems it raises for basic issues of social and distributive justice. (Just as few Indians seem to abide any discussion of the flaws of their generally wonderful country.) You get no argument from me when you say, "[A] non-utopian democracy with a non-utopian free market is far better that stalinist russia or maoist china." I think we can do better, though. And I think India, because its unique situation, can do a lot better. It won't, however, because folks like you have more personal ambition than they do hopes for their country; more selfishness than compassion; more complacency for pat, simplistic ideologies than creativity and boldness; and stronger desire to copy learned notions of success than to develop new standards commensurate with a vision of a sustainable future. You may have the last, red-baiting word. I'm bowing out. Cheers, MBJ

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:29:19 EST

Mark #54, "rather than for the collective good of the society" Karl Marx said the same thing. Soviet Union was founded on the same principle. the question here is: Who is going to decide the collective good of the society? If i give that power to u, you will get corrupt and misuse it (so will anyone else). if u give it to a comittee you are building a communist nation. if you give it to the people, who are illiterate.. you have a dysfunctional democracy like Indias(which is getting better by the day), if u give it to literate people without proper access to information... you are going to find WMDs in Iraq and mass murder Iraqis.. Now ideal democracy is the best way where people are completely rational and have complete access to information. Such a society will never exist and so your aim is a pipedream. Now lets come to the question of economy: if you create a controlled economy.. you would end up with corrupt indivduals controlling it. and so on and so forth... the only way to let society take care of it is by having a free market, ofcourse the assumption is that people are rational and they know everything, which is an utopia. However a non-utopian democracy with a non-utopian free market is far better that stalinist russia or maoist china. Do u get why i call you a communist.And why i consider your armchair advice to india unsolicited bullshit? Being a first rate imagination driven individual with seven figured income and rolce-royce renouncer, you must have something to teach even Adam Smith or Keynes. Or even greats like Ayn Rand or Howard Hughes. but i guess if you could not achieve what you aimed for in the US, then you probably cannot do that in India. Why are u wasting us third-raters time and energy, let us write code for microsoft, google intel or develop communication chipsets for qualcomm.

Comment by Jay

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 02:18:27 EST

Mark quotes... # 28When I'm in Mumbai, I always renew my season ticket for the train -- Second Class, as befits my humble status. and then a helpless jump to prove that he is a sacrificer, someone who can set an example!! #45 I sold my last car, incidentally, at a time when my income placed me among the most affluent people on the planet Sheeshh...is that lies or what? Shouldn;t this person be called a liar?

Comment by commonsenseforall

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:50:13 EST

Sujai, What you say makes sense to me!

Comment by Sujai

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:44:44 EST

#45, Mark: Not all of us, however, are hypocrites -- or communists, I would not go to that extent. Nor did I assume that you were one. I sold my last car, incidentally, at a time when my income placed me among the most affluent people on the planet Mark, that's admirable. You are right, that there is a big problem with India's appetite. However, I congratulated Ratan Tata and I am in admiration of what Tata has done with Nano. There are two things here- one is policy making and governance along with attitudes of Indian middle class, and the other is what I call as a democratization of luxuries. The first one sucks. Indian policy making is completely reactive, almost never proactive (except few areas). And its governance is in shambles. Planning and building Infrastructure is always a reactive one. We never seem to get out of that vicious cycle – by the time we have built it the traffic has exceeded the capacity. India does not seem to put its money into a massive public transportation either. And the attitudes of Indian middle class to plunder, loot and usurp as much as possible while the going is good. We are, as a nation, adding hundreds of thousands of cars per year into cities which can't handle so many cars. What I discussed here (and another article that I published Desicritics) is the democratization of luxuries. What Nano has set out to do is allow a common man to drive a car. Why is it so important? You may ask. Just look at small towns of India. There are thousands of people, with kids and families, who drive on major roads on their bikes – where kids are precariously balanced, even in chilly nights or in scorching heat. Whether it is late night or early morning, in rain or in a storm. Such people would benefit from this. What's wrong in giving the luxury to a common man? It's like giving TV, radio, mobile, motorbike to a common man. Now, it's giving a car.

Comment by Sanjay

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 01:26:13 EST

[Read comments policy please]

Comment by Mark

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:53:57 EST

Lakshmikanth: I do not "discount the power of innovation"; I fail to see true innovation in this instance. I do not discount "the power of the consumer market"; I think that awesome power can be both pernicious and made to do the bidding of those doing the marketing, rather than service the collective good of society. MBJ

Comment by Sanjay

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:46:54 EST

[Trash edited: read the comment policy AGAIN sanjay]

Comment by Anand Menon

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:38:31 EST

Deepti Lamba re #19..at 1.43 lakhs a Nano is still out of reach for those girls who travel in buses.Tata could introduce a pared down version of the Nano(already a pared down car) as an autorickshaw....its about time someone gave old man Rahul Bajaj some competition...time to get rid of those unstable tripods on wheels which give no protection to the passenger in the rain.

Comment by Lakshmikanth

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 00:16:43 EST

Mark: You know that there are a LOT of scientific innovations going on in the high energy density alternate fuels area.. now once fossil fuels start to reduce in supply the cost would spiral up but guess what, companies would look to provide alternate fuel cars which use other high density fuel instead of gas (like hydrogen etc etc). Once the mass production of this technology begins we will proceed the next level of energy economy. This can happen in less than 10 - 15 years because a lot of companies are looking into this. The initial cost of this technology is bound to be high(like say fuel cell or cryogenic hydrogen).But when gasoline supply goes low, the price of gas would be more than this.. then we would have the next level of scientific innovation to cater to the energy consumer. Tata has already tied up with ISRO to do research on this.. however you think we indians are a fourthrate country wiht a third rate imagination.... The basic argument you make is that we are people who have third rate imagination and hence would follow a development model that western societies follows, which according to you is screwed up. And since you are a person with first rate intelligence who had a seven figure income to support that fact, gave all of that up and moved to india to help us underprivileged fourth rate country. What you discount is the power of innovation, even though its a third rate one, and the power of the consumer market.

Comment by Mark

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:56:47 EST

Sanjay: Your nausea is your problem, not mine. Sadly, a weak stomach is not your only shortcoming. You display a childish inability to see past either/or reasoning and you seem incapable of giving my words a fair reading -- to name just two others. My thesis isn't that it was a good thing for America (and other developing countries) to develop near-sighted, unsustainable patterns of transportation, but that it's bad when India does it. I argue that the post-war consumer societies of America and Europe were myopic, but that India's failure of vision is psychosomatic, because it involves not only an inability to see things as they are or will be, but even to recognize what has already happened. I argue that India's sin is not the incremental increase in environmental degradation (though that is a perfectly sensible position), but the failure to take advantage of leaning from the mistakes of others. I'm not "preaching piety," as you suggest; I'm preaching thoughtfulness and intelligence. You assume that I am an American exceptionalist, or at least a chauvinist. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Please do not project your self-evident jingoism on me. The fact that you are not constitutionally able to find the slightest shred of fault with your own country should not lead you to assume that others are so uncritical of their surroundings and affiliations. I understand that it is easier for you to attack the blunt straw-men of your own creation, rather than assessing the more subtle arguments I have made. But please understand that it embarrasses those of us who have to read your self-involved back-and-forth, which look like intellectual masturbation. MBJ p.s. to the DC editors: I know you have a no-vile-attacks policy for the commentary, but I get a kick out of seeing the names I'm called. Plus, I think it is useful for others, who may not have made up their mind on an issue, to gain additional perspective on the nature of the folks advancing a particular point of view. Next time Sanjay goes over-the-top, please let his words stand so that we can see them.