Dear Mr. Tata

It is in great awe I write this note. A dreamy 20 something citizen of this nation, I have grown up to hearing tales of your family’s contribution to nation building. Just as any other self respecting Indian I am proud to be even talking about the Tatas.

When I heard about the new car to be produced at Singhur and sold at Rs. 1 lakh (USD 2200) I thought it was a phenomenon. It will truly be an engineering marvel and a lesson in innovation that the world will sit up and notice. Collectively as a nation we salute that achievement!

With nearly 50 % of our population being in the productive age group and the economy going great guns, a car will not be a distant dream anymore. The increasing accidents and pollution will definitely augur well for the car since it will be definitely preferred to a 2 wheeler. It is surely a dream come true for the ‘Great Indian middle class’ for whom the possession of a car goes one step beyond being a status symbol.

The crux of the matter here is that our roads will soon be highly inundated with Tata cars. The very thought seems to give me the jimjams. Traffic has already become the most legitimate excuse for getting late to our destination. An influx of cars complemented with rising disposable incomes and easily obtainable loans and licenses is nothing short of a nightmare.

Come to think of it, the sheer number of vehicles will slow us down considerably. Everybody in general will be spending more time on roads than anything else. It will take longer to get to work or school. Raw materials and goods in transit will take longer to reach. People will arrive late to meetings and miss flights. So in effect the cost of transportation and fuel will increase substantially. This cost with respect for goods is directly handed over to us – consumers. So in effect we are not only paying for this in terms of quality of life, less leisure, health and climate change but also directly. The only ‘short term’ gainers are the motor companies.

Look at our metropolitan cities today. Thousands of vehicles hit the road every single day. This is surely great news for Motor companies such as yours who are making hay when the sun is shining. Every time a new road or flyover is built it only takes a few hours after it is inaugurated to be jammed. The infrastructure may be getting better but it takes no time for the roads to get filled up again. The rate of building cars is exponentially greater than the rate of building roads.

Can anyone on earth escape traffic jams, long hours of nauseated rides and pollution related health hazards? However clichéd it may sound, can we avoid being victims of ‘Global Warming’? Can we try to minimize the use of fossil fuels?

Traffic problems are a great equalizer in India. Walking even short distances will soon become obsolete. I think it is grotesque to have people suffering for no reason. Suffering due to increased vehicular heat and pollution, and possible pruning of green patches. Suffering due to increased carbon content in the air causing climate change.

A sincere suggestion here would be to ask you to build Asthma hospitals as well. I still prefer the miniscule number of trees to parking lots. I still prefer to hear a rare bird chirping in the morning than the raucous din of honking cars. I still prefer a rare whiff of fresh air to the heavily carbon laden air. I still prefer not missing the family dinner to wading my way through traffic.

This is not an appeal or a speech Mr. Tata. It is a litany – for our future. We do not want to live in a world with obnoxiously high carbon-di-oxide levels or cancer victims. We do not want to spend most of our day in traffic snarls and hardly any time for anything else. We do not want to spend most of our working time in insurance claims. We want to extend our planet’s stay in the solar system at least for the next half a century.

Is this too much to ask?


Yours truly
A believer in vehicular population control