Shekhar Kapur approves of the Nano:

It’s caused a sensation all over the world, where car manufacturers looked forward to inundating the Indian consumer with their more expensive brands, only to see that an Indian co has completely stolen a march on them. Bravo Mr Tata ! But I really resent all the people that go on about the envoirnmental cost of the car. So it’s ok to allow people who can afford it. to import gas guzzling big and expensive brands. But the moment we have a real people’s car, that is energy efficient and serves those that the lower end of the pyramid, everyone is conscious of clogged roads….

MBJ doesn’t:

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.

Preeti Aroon calls it the ‘Model T of India’. Tarry Singh calls it ‘ India’s Volkswagen’.