Chariots of Plastic

Mack Hall

Seventy-something years after Germany invented The People’s Car, India has reinvented it.

The Tata Group (I’m not sure what a group of Tatas is, or even a single Tata) has built the prototype of a five-seater sedan, the Nano, which will cost $2,500, about the price of a couple of cups of de-fatinated cuppacino at Starbuck’s.

The Nano features a two-cylinder gasoline engine, will putt-putt down the road for fifty miles on a gallon of gas, and meets all European safety and emissions standards. The Nano features no power windows, no radio, and no air-conditioning. In short – and the Nano is fairly short – it’s pretty much a Hindu reincarnation of the Model T.

You and I can’t buy one. For now.

The next step up is the Maruti 800 from India and the Chery from China at about $5,000 each.

You and I can’t buy one of those either. For now.

These first-world cars (because we are now exporters of raw materials, not manufactured goods, to China and India) are cheap and efficient, and so naturally the environmentalists are concerned about the planet. This means they are concerned about uppity peasants enjoying freedom. After all, if Gupta and Chang can afford their own cars, they can drive to the next town for a better job, and maybe even move out to the suburbs. No longer will Gupta and Chang be restricted to living in the center of Bombay and Shanghai, dependent on politically-controlled public transportation and public housing.

An advantage for Hindus is that getting together to burn Christian churches will be more convenient. Instead of mobs with pitchforks and torches running down the streets, India can have mobs in their Nanos and plastic cigarette lighters driving down the streets. The old days of spreading rumors by word of mouth will be replaced with spreading rumors via text-messaging, thus advancing civilization.

One wonders – does a mob burning a church have to buy carbon-offsets for the event?

India is a remarkable nation. Controlled by the British for almost two hundred years, India after independence has become more British than the British. India is a capitalist nation that exports teachers, investors, technology, and manufactured goods all over the world, while Britain, where the Industrial Revolution began, is now little more than a Soviet Socialist Disneyland increasingly controlled by…I’m supposed to say extremists, I suppose, or disaffected youths.

India, having fought for the British in World War I, World War II, and the colonial wars, kept its British military traditions, and, unlike Britain, is proud of its army, its navy, its nuclear weapons, and its developing space program. India, like China, is taking its turn as an awakening and dynamic giant, while America and Europe seem to be idling in a lotus-land of self-indulgent pop culture, dime-store religious mysticism, junk food, and interminable lawsuits.

In sum, we might someday be driving our Nanos to our jobs at a Mahindra plant in Beaumont, and reporting to Mr. Gupta.