Actually, the story should line up with the risks and benefits for the world economy in 2008 and into the future. The story of such a car is an example of a revolution, not so much technological as consumerist, and revolutions are unpredictable.
First, let us take a closer look at the car. It is probably going to be called the Nano and will have an engine of 624 cubic centimeters. It will seat two people and may be able to accommodate someone or something else in the back seat.
The car incorporates a couple of interesting 21st century ideas, including clean exhaust. Ratan Tata, head of the giant Tata corporation, presented the car at the 9th Auto Show in New Delhi. His company is known for heavy duty trucks and for the Indica, a small $5,000 car that appeared on the roads in India in 1998.
India, a nation of more than a billion people, has a middle class estimated by Indians to be 200 to 300 million people. By the classical standards of Europe or America (per person income), these 200-300 million do not qualify as a middle class. They are, for example, not in the position to buy a $10,000 car.
On the other hand, imported minicars that enjoy no demand in prosperous countries are thronging the Indian streets. There is now a chance that tens of millions people will become mobile in that country. It is likely that within the next ten years, these people driving their new $2,500 vehicles will have something that has never been seen in India before - a well-developed road network with observed traffic laws.
The middle class in India is not developing in the same way as others in other countries. It can afford to exist for less money. The consequences of this are difficult to forecast as it is difficult to foresee how many other countries will come up with their own models of development.
Political observers see that models of imported democracy do not work outside American or European societies. The reason is the difference in cultures, each having its own scale of values and principles of human interaction.
But economic patterns do not work either, because an economy is based on human feelings - a person gets what he has set his or her heart on.
The now out of print Hong Kong magazine Asiaweek once recounted how in the 1980s, seven or eight years after Chinese reforms were set in motion, Western companies conducted a survey in China to see which goods were most sought by the increasingly wealthier Chinese. It emerged that the most sought item was refrigerators, followed by washing machines and televisions.
Almost the same poll, the magazine said, was conducted in Russia, in the mid-1990s, which launched its market reforms ten years after China. Russian priorities were different: a foreign trip, then a television set, followed by a car.
The middle classes of both countries got their first, second and the third desires, plus washing machines, but that is not the point. The point is that new leaders show the world completely unpredictable models of development.
No one expected that a not overly wealthy Russia would be one of the most active buyers of luxury cars: consumers in this country seem to be buying either top models or nothing at all.
This scene is in total contrast to India, where no one considers poverty and frugality a shame; where having a $2,500 car is quite normal, and even the most respected citizens find it especially chic to wear a coat with home-patched elbows.
One can only muse on the political results of all these changes. A Project Syndicate analyst recently commented on China. He wrote: "...China's success story is also the most serious challenge that liberal democracy has faced since fascism in the 1930s. This is not because China poses a great military threat - war with the United States, or even Japan, is only a fantasy in the minds of a few ultra-nationalist cranks and paranoiacs. It is in the realm of ideas that China's political-economic model, regardless of its environmental consequences, is scoring victories and looking like an attractive alternative to liberal-democratic capitalism."
The Chinese model has proven its worth because it has matched the preferences and scale of customer values against the system supplying customer requirements. China is an example for many countries whose peak has yet to arrive.
The Indian model, it stands to reason, is different, but also successful. Brazil and Russia differ from China, India and each other. More success stories are likely to emerge.
Human history has turning points when consumer attitudes alter entire epochs, and do so very suddenly.
Recall the late 1920s and early 1930s. America was already running its first passenger air service between New York and Boston. But in the United Kingdom, the only superpower at its peak, people did not understand why they should go from London to a colony like Singapore by air and take 10 days to do so, when this could be done leisurely during 30 days aboard an ocean liner, with an orchestra, dance halls and smoking lounges.
The U.K. began drawing up a program to build airships with the same lounges to make travel comfortable for passengers. In 1931, a disaster that struck the first such ship in Paris ended the program.
Few if any people at the time predicted that from the failed technological revolution, conservative-minded Britain would win World War II but lose its empire, and the technologically more advanced Americans would usher in America's era of great power.
An era that is now changing into something new and unknown.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
