[Assam] Thank you, Mr Tata, for thinking of the common man!

[Ram Sarangapani]

>By the way, in Ratan Tata's mother tongue Gujarati, 'nano' means small.

And I thought the word nano originated from Greek "Nanos" meaning
small/dwarf, and hence words like nanotechnology!

The other thing - the Tatas.. arent't they Zorastrians, whose mother tongue
is Parsee?

:):)
--Ram

On 1/11/08, Pradip Kumar Datta <pradip200 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Thank you, Mr Tata, for thinking of the common man!
>          Sheela Bhatt
>
> January 11, 2008  visit: www.marketmantra.in
>
> http://www.rediff.com/money/2008/jan/11sheela.htm
> Mr Ratan Tata, thank you very much!
> You have created history, not because you have created the cheapest car in
> the world but because you have touched our emotions, our hearts. Thanks a
> million.
> For more than 900 million Indians, who live ordinary lives, this is a rare
> moment when they feel like they are being taken care of by the rich and the
> mighty class.
> Your class, I mean the others who are amongst the richest Indians, must be
> feeling a little squeamish today as they saw the overwhelming coverage of
> you unveiling your pretty car in the Indian press and on television.
> Frankly, the best part of your endeavour is that you have taken terrific
> care to make sure that your car does not resemble a superior version of a
> Bajaj autorickshaw. That would have made us feel humiliated. Instead, you
> have done it with style, and class. Thanks again.
> The stock exchange might not reacted favourably to your history-making
> venture, but that is also the proof that Tata Nano is not just about money.
> It's about profits along with creating a great product.
> Very soon the Bajajs and the Munjals, the Japanese and the Koreans will
> also realize this. We are told that you may be making a humble profit of
> only Rs 4,000 per Tata Nano, but life in globalization is about ideas plus
> profit.
> In one single stroke you have created a new class within the Indian
> society. Overnight, my canteen manager Sitaram-ji, my driver's elderly
> father who is a retired army man, my grocery supplier Mr Arora, and all such
> nice people with decent but limited income can start dreaming.
> That's wow! Really!
> Till the 1990s, Indians were striving for roti, kapda, makan, water and
> roads. Then, the desires expanded. Consumerism started to find a foothold in
> the country, but glitzy acquisitions were still within the reach of only the
> fairly well heeled.
>
> But, now, I cannot but be amused as I visualize a supervisor stepping out
> of his Alto-deluxe and his salesman disembarking from his Tata Nano for an
> informal meeting at a Barista outlet.
> As expected, Bajaj Auto Ltd [Get Quote] managing director Rajiv Bajaj
> talked about profits the other day. He said: "We have seen the car (Tata
> Nano) and it looks good, but I haven't heard them (the Tatas) say that it
> will be profitable."
> No one can be so off the mark. To be an industrialist in the new economy
> is not to be a new zamindar. It is about inclusive growth without losing out
> on innovation, technology and growth.
> Mr Tata, you have given shape to our secret desires. In all seriousness,
> India's hyper-energetic middle class and the impatient poor who want to
> break into the upper economic layer salutes you today. You have accomplished
> what CPI (M) general secretary Prakash Karat -- with his bagful of idealism
> -- could not do, or what Prime Minister Manmohan Singh -- with his
> five-page-long qualifications as an ace economist -- could not do, and what
> all Karl Marx-quoting hypocrites could not dream of doing.
> Tata Nano is the great symbol of Indian-ishtyle socialism. This is
> socialism suited for the 21st century. As a nano favour, Karat should write
> a letter to the United Progressive Alliance government recommending you for
> the Bharat Ratna because by thinking so big on behalf of those smiling and
> struggling Indians travelling awkwardly on unreliable two- or
> three-wheelers, you have given us something to boast about.
> For the first time, our favourite pro-people activist and Centre for
> Science and Environment director Sunita Narain looked out of sync on TV on
> Thursday when she talked about congestion, pollution and the other inherent
> problems 'caused by' the auto industry.
> Right now, there are about five million cars and 70 million two-three
> wheelers on Indian roads. In the coming five years there might not be more
> than 500,000 Tata Nanos in the Indian market, but there will certainly be
> 500,000 ordinary Indian families enjoying a safer ride in their own
> four-wheeler.
> The entire Nano event is important from only one point of view. We are
> taught that social democracy is all about the majority of people having an
> equitable share of the resources of the nation. Water, land, metals, food
> and roads -- every basic requirement for living should be distributed in
> such a manner that more and more people reap the benefits. Since the last 60
> years the rich who constitute a single digit percent of the population had
> all the roads to themselves except for the footpath.
> "Yeh road tere baap ka hai?" is the common aggressive sentence ordinary
> pedestrians heard from insensitive car drivers. Yes, the road should be more
> the property of the common people of India, but those who can afford
> Marutis, Hondas and Skodas wrongly think that they should be given the right
> of way by pedestrians on wretched Indian roads. Yes, road common people ke
> baap ka hai, this is what Tata Nano is shouting from the rooftops. For that
> we are so happy, Mr Tata.
> Creating roads was a capital-intensive development and took away a large
> share of the planned budget and ended up helping the rich and upper class
> much, much more. Huge chunks of land were taken away to build highways and
> expressways, but 80 per cent of people living around them have no use for
> them because they simply cannot afford the cars or even autorickshaws to
> drive on them.
> People without cars had to struggle to have their share of the roads. The
> most shocking fact is that when the New Delhi government built a magnificent
> cluster of flyovers near the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, it
> simply forgot that there will be many people on foot too! Only after UPA
> chairperson Sonia Gandhi inaugurated it were some amendments made.
> It's so difficult to walk or even cycle in cities. Tata Nano is important
> from the point of view of having a piece of the pie of the national asset
> called 'road.' So far, only the rich could boast of driving on roads and
> highways.
> But now the 'other class' will enter. Sunita Narain's argument about
> pollution and congestion is first class but it comes at a wrong time and at
> the wrong place because it is a general argument applicable to all and
> mainly to Central government which is bereft of ideas on development.
> The real reason behind the euphoria caused by the Tata Nano is the
> negligence of mass-transit systems in India since decades. Every ordinary
> Indian has his or her tale to share about how they have suffered in
> jam-packed and rickety state transport buses, how they are crushed in Mumbai
> local trains, and how elderly people dread travelling by any means of public
> transport.
> It is a national shame to see the way women, children and the elderly
> travel in Mumbai's local trains, but no government or industrialist thinks
> about putting their act together to help more than 4 to 5 million people
> even when Mumbai is reaching a breaking point.
> For the first time, the Kolkata and Delhi metro rails gave 'respect' to
> the common man's need for better transport.
> We would like to believe that Tata Nano is a symbolic gesture to bring the
> common Indian in national focus. If India had better public transport, we
> would not have given a rousing welcome to Tata Nano.
> By the way, in Ratan Tata's mother tongue Gujarati, 'nano' means small.
>
> visit: www.marketmantra.in
>
>
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