Hello Bhpians,
I see a few misinterpretations of my earlier long post, so let me clarify myself further.
But, before i do that i would like to make a few disclaimers:
1. I am not a socialist. In fact i am a capitalist who has his own business and who definitely want it to grow.
2. I am not at all against cars, In fact i am a complete petrolhead and motorsports fan which should be apparent from my Handle as well as my Garage. But, having said that i believe that cars should be taxed heavily because of the carbon footprint they leave behind during manufacture as well as their operating life and also because they are an luxury item if you have a good public transport in place.
3. I am not an advocate of our govt. either, like all of you, i believe that they are doing a pathetic job in handling our country.
4. So, i would like to keep this discussion related to govt. policies only and nothing personal.
So, for a few moments lets not be petrolheads and think rationally.
What i interprete from OP's post is that govt should have friendly policies for automobile sector for various reasons stated by him. But, i dont think it would be such a good idea because i think transportation problem of india is very different from transportation problems of developed western countries and we cant copy their solutions just because it has worked there. OP has stated that govt. should promote aumobile sector and allow car penetration levels of 500-700/1000, same as developed nations. Which means in our country of 1.2 billion people, we will be having minimum of 600-850 million cars on our roads, which also means every household will have approximately 2-3 cars assuming four occupants per home.
So, answer a few important questions to yourself:
1. Where will we park our cars? Do we have 2-3 parkings per home in our residential areas? My observation tells me that current ratio is <1.
2. Assuming only 1/3rd cars come to roads everydays, we will be still having 200-300 million cars on our roads. Do we have such roads in cities and highways (probably 8-10 lane internal city roads and may be 20 lane highways)?
3. If 50% people bring their cars to offices, marketplaces, malls and multiplexes, do we have enough parking spaces there?
4. Are we going to demolish all these buildings and construct such a large roads to accomodate these many no. of cars?
5. Even if we decide that cars are the most important objects in our life and decide to rebuild everything, are we rich enough to do that?
6. Even if we are rich anough to do that, does it make any sense to do that? Is that money not better spent on education, healthcare, irrigation(1.2 billion people consume a lot of food), science and innovation, recreation?
7. Lastly can you imagine environmental impact it will have to manufacture and operate these many no. of cars and civil engineering reconstruction of everything that we have developed so far? Can we afford to do that when our environment is already in fragile state?
Common sense says that all the answers to the above questions are a big "No" only because of the factor called "Population Density" which is very high in our country. So, the only primary option remains is to improve Public Transport of our country to the leves that of developed nations. Individual transport is good in regions where population density is so low that there wont be sufficient users of public transport to keep it alive. Like Australia (PD 3/sq. km), USA(PD 21/sq.km.), etc. and public transport is good in countries like India (PD 369/sq.km, Mumbai has PD 20,800/sq.km. for your reference ). You can check wikipedia for PD figures for other countries and cities and see for yourself.
All this doesnt mean our govt. should ban cars in india. Since we live in a free, democratic country, every one should have right to by it, but, govt. policies should be such that people will prefer public transport.
So, what i meant form my previous post is that
1. We should be more concerned about our public transport improving at the snail's pace and not the increasing car prices.
2. If we think we can create difference in govt. policies towards automobile sector by voicing strongly on such forums, we can certainly do that for public transport also.
3. Employment can be generated through other fields which need drastic improvement like irrigation (we have huge amount of quality land in our country remaining uncultivated only because there is no water, on the other hand, a lot of people die of flooding also each year), infractucture, etc, etc.
I also see the car prices going down if the public thansport improves because
1. We are not a nation who loves cars (may be Italy, Germany are). Our favourite tv shows are defineitely not Top Gear, Fifth Gear, Motorsports (Though i live by them). We petrolheads count for less than 10% of total population, rest see cars as the liability. So, if good public transport is in place, people will always prefer it (leaving empty roads for us petrolheads) which should reduce demand and prices for cars.
2. Govt. (also private sector companies) tends to charge more on things which are high in demand and which dont have have any option/competition. For example, we cannt replace petrol, diesel with anything for our vehicles so, govt. taxes the hell out of it. Also, simillarly in private sector, favourite cars of people like Swift, Innova, Fortuners call for a premium over the competetion. So, if demand goes down taxes also tend to go down for such items.
Lastly, i would like to ask one simple question to all the advocates of automobile industry here, especially given the way things operate in india, Do you sincerely think that this same automobile sector lobby doesnt play a significant role in keeping our public transport in shabby state of affairs? How many will buy their cars if it improves?
I just hope you are not so knaive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by carboy Are you willing to sell your car(s) and not buy one till such time the infrastructure improves? |
Definitely not. But, i don't mind paying higher taxes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ninjatalli + 1 to this. |
Thnx for understanding my point.
Quote:
Originally Posted by anu21v Very Well said. As far as Industry's concern, they should better learn how to keep making profits on stable set of volume as in "Market Size" (as Mr Boneham points out) rather than ever increasing set of volume as in "Growth". |
+1 to this