While its true that ARAI has been a hindrance in this particular case and probably a few other cases, it is not just right to paint them yellow and say 'oh lets do away with them'.
ARAI has done quite bit of work with regard to emission regulations, testing procrdures and a whole lot of other areas. The difference between Indian and European emission norms were close to 15 years a few years back. This has been reduced to about 3 - 4 years now. It might be simple to say that they just adopted the existing norms there. That is not completely true, as they have modified the norms based on the Indian driving cycle and also the density of vehicle population (for 2 wheelers). They also work closely with the tranport departments of big cities like Delhi to improve on the PUC checking process.
Agreed that they currently do not have testing facilities (crash testing?) which are required in todays world, but that is being taken care of. Their existing facitlies at Pune and Gurgaon along with the VRDE facility at Ahmednagar are being upgraded. Additional facility is also being built at Chennai.
They ofcourse have the disadvantages of a typical government organisation, but the little which is being done today to ensure that vehicle manufacturers do not take people for a ride is done by ARAI. |