I was coming to Gurgaon in a bus today and it was an ordeal of some sort. It took me 3 hours to complete the journey which should have taken half the time. The traffic jams at three places should be blamed for this while Government can be cursed for everything. The cause of traffic jams was different at different places.

The first traffic jam happened because a flyover is being constructed there. The part of the road is under construction so the road width has decreased causing narrower exodus of vehicles than before. The Govt. is making significant investments to improve the infrastructure of Delhi and to equip the city to host Commonwealth Games in 2010.

The cause of the second jam was some rainfall last night which clogged the roads with rainwater. The same road is said to be one of the best in the capital and it’s a kind of shame when the movement of vehicles slows down because of something as mundane as drizzle. Has the govt. invested the money wisely in creating the highway? Didn’t engineers should have taken rain into account before making highway?

The third cause was the long(est) queue at a Toll bridge. The Govt. charge money from every single vehicle which enters Gurgaon from the capital so that they can have fuller treasury to invest on making more highways which clog down after some rain.

When you do something you advertise that you can do it. The govt. of India is advertising its inability to make smart investments in infrastructure because advertising doesn’t have to be loud every time.

Enough has been said and read about people’s car or TATA Nano and nearly all the articles and blogs seems like copies of each other. In fact the opinions of people are divided into two categories: one is talking about the freedom of personal mobility that it can provide to masses at cheaper price and the other one is objecting to the pollution and congestion crisis that this ‘little elephant’ can cause. But amidst all this excitement one thing is sure that TATA Motors has created history and rewritten the rules of automobile industry.

I wont talk about how it looks like,or the emission levels or things which have already been said. What I really think is this car can ensue a revolution in the field of ‘percussive engineering’(=messing up with things in order to make them work better,see ‘percussive maintenance’ to digest this) particularly in India. Indians are not known to experiment a lot with their priced assets and it is the reason why we never have a character who can do whole lot of things by tweaking and screwing in Bollywood films. We will never have a character like Basher Tarr of Ocean 11(played by Don Cheadle) in Indian films because Indians love their gadgets so much that they will never screw it. In fact their love can more eloquently be put as the fear of messing up the whole thing while mending one. Only the few brave do all the tweaking on their own with their cars and this intrepidity is often called foolishness.

The tata nano has been priced such that its parts should cost a little more than that of two wheelers which I believe is a good sign for percussive engineering. So people can experiment more without big monetary fears. Tata nano can do something like what Nintendo Wii did in video gaming industry. It was priced almost half the price of competitors and focussed on all new spectrum of consumers. Playing on Nintendo Wii is most enjoyed with family and it was obvious that it became the number one present in Christmas season.

However people in India might not gift this car but they certainly can innovate whole lot of things around TATA Nano. India produces the largest number of engineers in the world but there are very few out of these which can be employed in the private sector. The fault lies with the education method in India which stresses a lot on theory rather than practicals. A student of automobile engineering without any knowledge of V 12 engine is only possible in India.

Its not that things are very bad from the innovation point of view in India but TATA Nano can give the people a toy to play with and learn which can lead to bigger things in this sector.