It’s been a crazy few days for this blog. The announcement by Tata of the launch of its Nano, the Rs. 1 lakh ($2,500) “People’s Car” designed to bring automobile ownership to India’s masses, gave my old essay, India: Going Nowhere Fast, a new currency; and this blog has received more than 1,300 hits in the last three days.
A story about India’s booming auto industry leads today’s New York Times business section. “Ask a billion people, and 99 percent of them are going to say they want a car,” explains Jagdish Khattar, managing director of Maruti Suzuki India, the country’s largest car manufacturer. “The problem,” he continues, “is: How many can afford it?”
And so Maruti Suzuki, and the other Indian automakers are cranking out inexpensive cars by the lakhs. Car sales within India will reach nearly two million units this year, and are estimated to climb to nearly four million by 2013.
Most tout this kind of industrial muscle and burgeoning consumer acquisitiveness as signs of a brilliantly expansive, vital economy. I see it as further evidence – as if more was needed – that India is a second-rate country with first-rate promise, limited by third-rate imagination and fourth-rate fidelity to the values and traditions of its proud past.
Put another way: India is squandering its Twenty First Century economic opportunity with its mid-Twentieth Century mindset.
... because the idiocy of manliness is an evergreen topic.
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... because Canada and the US will celebrate their Thanksgiving holidays and, regrettably and preventably, not 1-cook-in-10 will serve a decent turkey.
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... because everyday is Mother's Day.
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... because the American Dream seems but a distant memory, given the country's dominant ethos of small-mindedness.
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Serenity and Gratitude to Bring in the New Year
... to remind us that not every mix of Tibetans and Western spiritual seekers has to be nauseating.
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... to celebrate the new edition of Infinite Vision published in India.
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Expelliarmus! Harry Potter and the Path to Gandhian Nonviolence
... reprised because military strategy seems more cruel and less effective than ever -- and certainly there is a better way.
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... because cars are ruining Pondicherry, where I live. How badly are they fucking up your Indian town?
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Understanding the Gift Economy
... reprinted because more-and-more people seem want to understand the gift economy. (Yeah!)
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