Why Blame Ratan Tata for the Nano?

Date

February 1, 2008

That is the title of a wonderful article by Govindraj Ethiraj. It is the only sensible arguement I have read amongst all the people who are gunning for Ratan Tata for creating more traffic and chaos on Indian roads.

Ratan Tata is chairman of Tata Motors. He is passionate about cars. Not just driving or admiring them but about building them as well. Ten years ago he unveiled the Indica, the country’s first indigenous car. The Indica was greeted with much acclaim. On the road, it was a different story. The car had several glitches and it took several years before they were resolved.

Tata acknowledged the Indica’s failings from start. It was not easy. Possibly he turned the criticism as encouragement to work even harder to create an error-free product. But the Indica experience, as traumatic as it may have been at outset, did not deter him from thinking even bigger – A project to build the world’s cheapest car.

So if Ratan Tata is a car maker, then all he can do, presumably, is to think of better, cheaper and bigger cars or dream of doing all of that. So he is only doing what he set out to do, or the founders of Tata Motors did when they set up the Tata Engineering & Locomotive Company (Telco which became Tata Motors recently) to make locomotives and other engineering products in 1945.

Continue reading the entire article here.

1 Comment

  1. SPM

    Why blame Tata?
    I think the answer is obvious – the Nano is going to be very popular and half the price of it’s current competitor, in other words is is a big threat to it’s competitors, and it is upsetting the status quo. It is that simple.