After cell phones its cars in India

I remember when I bought my first cell phone for Rs 45,000. I was paying Rs 16.40 per min for outgoing as well as incoming calls. Thanx to Reliance Communications, we are now paying nothing for incoming calls and almost nothing for outgoing calls as well. Any person form a vegetable seller to a drainage cleaner now has a cell phone in India. Tata Motors launched their new car which will cost just above Rs 1 Lakh on road. This cost is less than half the cost of a cheapest car available in India. The car was unveiled by 70 year old Chairman Ratan Tata.

The car has a three-cylinder 800cc petrol engine with 33 BHP of power. It has a 30-liter fuel tank and four-speed manual gearshift. The car comes with air conditioning and does not have power steering. The car has front disk and rear drum brakes. The company claims mileage of 22 KMPL in city and 26 KMPL on highway. Ratan Tata calls this ‘The People’s Car’.

I don’t know how many of you are aware of this…About 60,000 cars are daily booked in the city of Mumbai & New mumbai. This is the case where the lowest car costs around 3.5 lakhs on road. Imagine the number or cars on the road after the launch of this car. I have heard of Bajaj & Maruti Udyog also planning to launch such cheap cars and its going to be cars everywhere. Mumbai currently is full of traffic and there is no place to park cars. You can find buildings in Mumbai where cars like BMW & Mercedes are parked on road as there is no parking available inside. It takes at least an hour to cross a stretch of 1-2 KMS at some places in Mumbai.

Fast growing economy, easy installments on vehicles & now such cheap cars…every person can easily have a car now and add to more traffic congestions & pollution. The only good thing I believe to see here is less number of cabs & rickshaws. I guess the Government now needs to think seriously about building fly overs everywhere around the city. If we continue at this pace then I wont be surprised to see low flying automobiles in ten years.