Urban Indians-Car People

Cars define Indian cities. Everyone you know has one in every shape and size you can imagine. Like Americans, urban Indians are in love with his car and are not afraid to show it to the whole world. For those born in India since the 90’s, there’s probably nothing to mention about this. But for those of us born in the decades before the 90’s, this is a miracle unfolding in front of us. From the 70’s to the 80’s, India was largely a country without private cars.

High-ranking government or public sector business officials were carried out by officially provided ambassadors. So did the very senior military and police officers. Their cars could be identified by license plates with flags and stars (defining the status of residents in the hierarchy of the organization). Private cars were owned only by wealthy residents of the city who learned the art of successful business with licensed large dispensing, or by the town’s leading doctors and lawyers. In other parts of the world, local buses or motorcycles, preferably scooters, were used, among which many brands were available-names such as Bajaj-Chetac, Lambretta, Vijay-Super grew up in it. An era well known to many people. There were only three brands in the car: a malicious ambassador like a tank, a nifty Fiat (also known as Premier Padmani), and a stylish and sporty standard.

Most people didn’t really want to buy a car, knowing that they probably couldn’t afford it. In an environment where carriages (tongas) are a regular means of commuting in the town, there was no talking car culture. Only members of Indian aristocrats such as the former Maharaja and Zaimundal (landlords) and Wehrmacht officers had some passion for cars. For laymen, Hindi movies were the only exposure to the glamorous American car (Impala) driven with talent by movie stars like Rajesh Khanna and Fellows Khanna. Young boys and girls studying in major public (private) schools in many hill towns in India have considerable information about the events of the automobile world, thanks to the western inclination of their education. It was. They sourced information from watching foreign magazines, major international bestsellers they would read, and action-paced American and British (James Bond) movies.

This was the case until the Maruti Suzuki tsunami struck urban areas of India in the early 1980s. It’s a nifty high-speed car with a small but surprisingly powerful engine that zips through the roads of Delhi and other Indian towns and cities like never before. .. The fact that it offered great performance and mileage at a small and affordable price inspired urban Indians with the intriguing prospect of owning their own car. What started as a trickle was flooded, and the launch of the Maruti 800 coincided with the opening of the dying Indian economy to the free flow of world trade. Spares have brought about this unprecedented growth. Unlike their parents, this new generation of young professionals didn’t hate risk at all and didn’t think about borrowing from banks or other financial institutions to raise money for their purchases. The easy availability of this money was itself the result of an enthusiastic pace of trying to recreate what the Indian economy was doing in the major Western nations of the time.

Today, India is one of the largest automobile markets in the world and almost every brand in the world is sold here. Mercedes, BMW, Ferrari, Toyota Lexus, Volks Wagon, Skoda, Toyota-they are all here. Tata Motors, one of the leading homegrown cars, owns Jaguar Land Rover, a British Marquee brand. Greater Noida, near Delhi, has India’s unique Formal 1 Grand Prix circuit. The visual conversion is complete.

Not perfect. Despite being one of the most important automobile markets in the world, India ranks very low with an average of 150 Human Development Indexes out of about 200 strange countries. There is still terrible poverty, horrific lack of education and medical care, squeaky inefficient infrastructure, endemic corruption and countless other illnesses. The country has made brilliant progress in all of these areas, but it’s definitely not out of the woods, and trying to recreate America’s obsession with cars here has many consequences. The growth of India’s automobile industry is tremendous, generating a lot of jobs and income, but the impact in terms of environmental costs and the apparently inadequate road burden of our city is catastrophic. It is nothing but.

Countries on the North American continent are blessed with very large lands with a relatively small population. India may be a big country, but its cities, towns and other city centers are crushed by seams. There can be no such thing as the United States or Canada where many can think of owning two cars and a large suburban home (recent economic hardships make it a little harder). Instead, India should consider countries such as the United Kingdom and Singapore where the use of private cars is banned. In countries like the Netherlands, many people commute by bicycle. It may be time for things to go around in India and rethink the national city’s obsession with cars.