The Reality of the "People's Car"

For those of you who probably haven't heard, Tata, a conglomerate that provides everything from tea to insurance to outsourcing to cars, introduced their anticipated "People's Car" on Thursday: the Tata Nano.

The annoucement comes with a guise of providing a status symbol to those who couldn't afford one before. But do they need it?

Traffic is abysmal already, and I've been told breathing the Bangalore air is equivalent to smoking a pack of cigarettes a day (a likely exaggeration, but the point is valid). On roads where the primary vehicle is the motorbike, the addition of cars means you can fit roughly half the number of commuters into the same unit of road-space.

And India has held the title for the most traffic deaths anywhere in the world for years, only escalated by the fact that there are few regulations on drivers' licenses.

I realize Americans have their own poor eviromental driving habits, and I don't mean to look over that. But there are far-worse contributing factors related to the infrastructure here that need to dealt with.

Anyway, read on to the Times article. It does a good job outlining my concerns on the issue.

Indians Hit the Road Amid Elephants (New York Times)