India's Auto Voracity: The Way Capitalism Fuels Desires
By Dr. Narendra Kumar Arya
28 December, 2013
Countercurrents.org
We Indians may claim the title of being the best breed of apes in world, unchallenged; we can copy anything or idea at its best without realizing or internalizing it, at all; and that should not be taken as an exaggerated statement. This attest to almost everything borrowed - modernity, democracy, parliamentarian system, ideas of equality and liberty to culture- industry, university system, Marxism or whatever, you name it we have it. But, we don’t need to mean it, though that might be true for very many other societies and countries as well. What we preach we don’t need people to really believe in, that too. We import, buy, adorn and boast but really don’t need it at its real value.
Birth of a Bourgeoisie Complex
Indian bourgeoisie is budding at never before rate of growth though its expanding range is limited anyhow it’s getting ‘fatty’, at least. The newest fad that is propelling it, is It’s new found passion and craziness for acquisition of cars and other versions of it defined as different ‘objects’. But why? Thanks to neo-liberalism and its shallow effects that have hatched a good breed of middle class and new rich who have ample money, irresponsibly unsustainable lifestyles, wealth to expend on their status upgradation and emulate the cultural bohemianism of their globally related counterparts in a global village. The highly skewed socially unequal structure of our country also adds a dimension to this lust of acquisition of cars and buys social status; if possible go a step or two higher in hierarchical set-up, offsetting impacts of caste-induced or wealth-bound inferiority complex.
The possession of cars as indispensible symbolism of psychological strengthening in Indian society is much more real phenomenon than its utilitarian aspects. The later is very faintly true. The social competition is much more determining factor than individual needs or reasoning. Here comes the alluring role of consumerism and its ‘need-creation’ ideology and strategy to compel everlasting production and consumption to make ‘money’ dynamic and inexhaustible. Cars did not only originate in America; but, these could be called the parasite of a particular geo-spatiality and social ecology. These emerged and grew in a very amiable environment which was somehow suitable to their growth and capitalistic rationale. However, since then, it has spread almost to every nook and corner of globe, given its addictive, seductive, utilitarian and socially-symbolic appeal and carved-value. When we say so, we are very concerned about the role of automobiles as medium of rapid transport and vehicles of luxury, status-value, snobbery, ecologically-undesirable and ‘indicative of inequality in transportational needs of different strata of people, discrimination in basic needs of people just because of income imbalances. We Indians need cars not only to drive to cut the distances fast and save time but park them as symbols of heightened snobbery outside our homes, as very few people have proper garages to ‘hide’ them; thanks to space-crunch in our burgeoning cities. I say ‘park’ and drive seldom because where are the roads to unleash these gasoline-guzzling monsters. It is revealed in a recent survey that Delhi is just not capital of India but capital in terms of roads in India and those who are fortunate enough to visit Delhi, to them nothing is more jocular and humorous than the irony of this bewildering claim.i No matter in relative terms apparent is true. In the work-going hours if you happen to be on roads of Delhi , you are tempted to contemplate that you are caught in an immortality of traffic streak; vehicles for kilometers seems to standstill and most of these are driven by owners lonely. Cars from every road, street, lane and turn appear like monsters of sizes different, as if, untied, unleashed and unchained to roam freely on the Delhi roads. And they have nowhere to go, just writhe, smoke and honk horns, frustratingly .If this is the condition of road-capital of India, imagining about other cities and towns will be far easier; with very many automobiles, non-existent road system, lack of traffic-discipline and civic-culture to tame rowdy autos.
Global Autopidemic
It is pathetic result of capitalism-inspired consumerism and its definitive desire to get resuscitated again and again in new territories and geospatial populaces. The vicious chain of consumerism traps everyone who dares to taste it either selectively or whole-heartedly. A few Indians have benefited from globalization and state-fed symbiotic nurturing and turned into a good bazaar and these are on whom all eyes are. The automobile industry is withering in land of its origin but before that it has served its masters well. (Once the automobile capital of the world, the city of Detroit has gone bankrupt; one of the biggest insolvency case in history of USA.) The first world is stuffed with infinite objects of desires practically, and had gone saturated; they are diverting the unnecessary to the third world, still economically meaningful. The capital primary has begotten several levels of exponential capital. The capital abroad works well as a slave. It brings profits without indulgence deep. As, it is better to import the material things, it costs less, creates no smoke at home or is environment-friendly first–hand, avoids ecological hazards, creates scope for carbon credits bargains, and is also more profitable, as money lying idle at home keep generating money abroad. The growth of passenger cars in China, India, Russia and Brazil like new consumerist destinations illustrates this fact. China consumes some 17.4 million vehicles, followed by America’s 14.5 and Brazil Stood at fourth place buying 3.6 million autos. India stole the rank of 6th largest auto market, consuming 3.3 million in 2012. Russia, Brazil, India and China are apple pies that every automaker eyes. Mexico, Thailand, South Africa, Poland, Indonesia and Iran etc are other preferred destination.
Most of the Indian cities are centuries old and preserve the infrastructural constriction which is choking to modern means of transportation and bourgeoisie ambitions of possession of cars and alike stuffs, and demonstrate their new found identity, just adds more woos to ordinary people who rely upon mass system of conveyance, by creating bottlenecks and dead traffic. The transportational infrastructure in most of the cities has been unable to catch up with the manifold changes in other domains of urbanizing life. The changes usually are augmentry and not revolutionary enough to accommodate the transformation gigantic as has occurred in the desires prolific. The cars are space killers and eaters. They need ‘space’ wherever they go. Imagine the spatial congestion and demographic density in our country and ponder how many more space-monster we can have?ii Our urban places are over-populated and infrastructure starved. It is even difficult to ply on foot comfortably. At times such, descends the notion, we are ‘cursed’ travelers of perennial cattle-class. India is one of the oldest continuing societies and maintains its primitivism even in sphere of architectural parochialism.
Bourgeoisie Desires in Prosperous Poverty
India is poverty’s earthly headquarter. Nowhere in the world have we had so many poor people concentrated at a single place. Even according to Government of India estimates, some 400 million Indians live below poverty and that is abject poverty; nowhere possible except in some of the poorest nations of Sub-Saharan Africa, living at less than ½ dollar a day! India’s coffers can’t and should be spent on driving wheels of bourgeoisie alone!iii More than ¾th of India’s import bill consists of petroleum products and a major portion of this import is eaten up the private cars. In economic terms, travel has utility for some people sometimes, but disutility for many other at many times, also that differential level of mobility affect and form different levels of cultures of consumption. Transportation networks and development of same are essentially related to single concern of economic productivity. They help to make accessibility of places possible which in return can influence the economic activity of places: more accessible places have more prosperous economies because lower transportation costs reduce both production and consumption costs.
Another facet of this greed is that car manufacturing and assembly facilities require very large pieces of land .Land in India have become a sort of vultures’ prey. Everyone is eager to buy earth; for factories, SEZs, manufacturing plants, mining fields, power plants, highways, real-estate either in predominantly tribal habitats or agricultural land making already poor people destitute and impoverished.iv The strengthening prices of crude oil in the recent past have made all the developing economies adopt a cautious approach for the judicious utilization of the already strained resources.
Automobile Industry was delicensed in July 1991; however, the passenger car was delicensed in 1993. No industrial license is required for setting up of any unit for manufacture of automobiles except in some special cases. The norms for Foreign Investment and import of technology have also been progressively liberalized over the years for manufacture of vehicles including passenger cars. At present 100% foreign direct Investment (FDI) is permissible under automatic route in this sector. The import of technology/technological up gradation on the royalty payment of 5% without any duration limit and lump sum payment of USD 2 million is also allowed under automatic route in this sector. The liberalization has provided biggest boost the industry. At present there are 17 manufacturers of passenger cars multi utility vehicles, 9 manufacturers of commercial vehicles, 16 of two & three wheelers and 14 of tractors, besides 5 manufacturers of engines. The industry had an estimated investment of nearly Rs. 8000 million by the year 2007-08. During the year 2006-2007, the turnover of the automotive sector has been hovering around Rs. 20600 millions.
The automobile industry has significantly increased its production capacity after liberalization ,standing around 15 lacs and 79 lacs for two & three wheelers respectively .The production and sale of four wheelers during the last decade has grown itself from 8 lacs to 20 lacs four wheelers per year.v Indians for more than a decade have been buying four wheelers at an average of 12-15 lacs car per year. At this rate only, in last twenty years we have some 2000 lacs cars (add another 6000-7000 Lacs bikes to this misery) on our share of earth, already critically scarce. These monsters eat and drink earth-oil, water, air, a poor nation’s hard-earned dollars, already crunched space etc. Do we really need them in such large numbers to suck our already scare resources? Are they really required to let loose breed freely at such high rate of multiplicative population? The situation is so somber when a large population is still waiting to come under the purview of middle class syndrome, as and when they will rise to next level of consumerist desires, the escalation of this automobile epidemic can only be suspected to catastrophic probabilities. Ecological hazards may be waiting for ideal moment to play games of havoc, let’s see how long we can defer the arrival of multipronged problems?
Dr.Narendra K. Arya was born and raised in Varanasi, India, educated at Banaras Hindu University and Patna University with Masters in Political Scientist and Business Management and Doctorate on issues of Globalization and Sovereignty of States. Worked as College teacher..Several poems,articles and published in reputed Hindi and English magazaines and Journals.
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